FBI Launches Open Attack on “Foreign” Alternative Media Outlets Challenging US Foreign Policy

Orinoco Tribune – News and opinion pieces about Venezuela and beyond
From Venezuela and made by Venezuelan Chavistas
Under FBI orders, Facebook and Google removed American Herald Tribune, an alternative site that publishes US and European writers critical of US foreign policy. The bureauās justification for the removal was dubious, and it sets a troubling precedent for other critical outlets.
By Gareth Porter
The FBI has publicly justified its suppression of dissenting online views about US foreign policy if a media outlet can be somehow linked to one of its adversaries. The Bureauās justification followed a series of instances in which Silicon Valley social media platforms banned accounts following consultations with the FBI.
In a particularly notable case in 2018, the FBI encouraged Facebook, Instagram and Google to remove or restrict ads on the American Herald Tribune (AHT), an online journal that published critical opinion articles on US policy toward Iran and the Middle East. The bureau has never offered a clear rationale, however, despite its private discussions with Facebook on the ban.
The FBIās first step toward intervening against dissenting views on social media took place in October 2017 with the creation of a Foreign Influence Task Force (FTIF) in the bureauās Counterintelligence Division. Next, the FBI defined any effort by states designated by the Department of Defense as major adversaries (Russia, China, Iran and North Korea) to influence American public opinion as a threat to US national security.
In February 2020, the FBI defined that threat in much more specific terms and implied that it would act against any online media outlet that was found to fall within its ambit. At a conference on election security on February 24, David K. Porter, who identified himself as Assistant Section Chief of the Foreign Influence Task Force, defined what the FBI described as āmalign foreign influence activityā as āactions by a foreign power to influence U.S. policy, distort political sentiment and public discourse.ā
Porter described āinformation confrontationā as a force ādesigned to undermine public confidence in the credibility of free and independent news media.ā Those who practice this dark craft, he said, seek to āpush consumers to alternative news sources,ā where āitās much easier to introduce false narrativesā and thus āsow doubt and confusion about the true narratives by exploiting the media landscape to introduce conflicting story lines.ā
RELATED CONTENT: Canadaās Knee of Contention
āInformation confrontationā, however, is simply the literal Russian translation of the term āinformation warfare.ā Its use by the FTIF appears to be aimed merely at justifying an FBI role in seeking to suppress what it calls āalternative news sourcesā under any set of circumstances it can justify.
While expressing his intention to target alternative media, Porter simultaneously denied that the FBI was concerned about censoring media. The FITF, he said ādoesnāt go around chasing content. We donāt focus on what the actors say.ā Instead, he insisted that āattribution is key,ā suggesting that the FTIF was only interested in finding hidden foreign government actors at work.
Thus the question of āattributionā has become the FBIās key lever for censoring alternative media that publishes critical content on U.S. foreign policy, or which attacks mainstream and corporate media narratives. If an outlet can be somehow linked to a foreign adversary, removing it from online platforms is fair game for the feds.
The strange disappearance of American Herald Tribune
In 2018, Facebook deleted the Facebook page of the American Herald Tribune (AHT), a website that publishes commentary from an array of notable authors who are harshly critical of U.S. foreign policy. Gmail, which is run by Google, quickly followed suit by removing ads linked to the outlet, while the Facebook-owned Instagram scrubbed AHTās account altogether.
Tribune editor Anthony Hall reported at the time that the removals occurred at the end of August 2018, but there was no announcement of the move by Facebook. Nor was it reported by the corporate news media until January 2020, when CNN elicited a confirmation from a Facebook spokesman that it had indeed done so in 2018. Furthermore, the FBI was advising Facebook on both Iranian and Russian sites that were banned during that same period of a few days. As Facebookās chief security officer Alex Stamos noted on July 21, 2018, āWe have proactively reported our technical findings to US law enforcement, because they have much more information than we do, and may in time be in a position to provide public attribution.ā
On August 2, a few days following the removal of AHT and two weeks after hundreds of Russian and Iranian Pages had been removed by Facebook, FBI Director Christopher Wray told reporters at a White House briefing that FBI officials had āmet with top social media and technology companies several timesā during the year, āproviding actionable intelligence to better enable them to address abuse of their platforms by foreign actors.ā He remarked that FBI officials had āshared specific threat indicators and account information so they can better monitor their own platforms.ā
Cybersecurity firm FireEye, which boasts that it has contracts to support ānearly every department in the United States government,ā and which has been used by Department of Homeland Security as a primary source of āthreat intelligence,ā also influenced Facebookās crackdown on the Tribune. CNN cited an unnamed official of FireEye stating that the company had āassessedā with āmoderate confidenceā that the AHTās website was founded in Iran and was āpart of a larger influence operation.ā
RELATED CONTENT: Venezuela Reopening Rate: 96% Under the 7+7 Scheme
The CNN author was evidently unaware that in U.S. intelligence parlance āmoderate confidenceā suggests a near-total absence of genuine conviction. As the 2011 official āconsumerās guideā to US intelligence explained, the term āmoderate confidenceā generally indicates that either there are still differences of view in the intelligence community on the issue or that the judgment āis credible and plausible but not sufficiently corroborated to warrant higher level of confidence.ā
CNN also quoted FireEye official Lee Fosterās claim that āindicators, both technical and behavioralā showed that American Herald Tribune was part of the larger influence operation. The CNN story linked to a study published by FireEye featuring a āmapā showing how Iranian-related media were allegedly linked to one another, primarily by similarities in content. But CNN apparently hadnāt bothered to read the study, which did not once mention the American Herald Tribune.
Finally, the CNN piece cited a 2018 tweet by Daily Beast contributor Josh Russell which it said provided āfurther evidence supporting American Herald Tribuneās alleged links to Iran.ā In fact, his tweet merely documented the AHTās sharing of an internet hosting service with another pro-Iran site āat some point in time.ā Investigators familiar with the problem know that two websites using the same hosting service, especially over a period of years, is not a reliable indicator of a coherent organizational connection.
CNN did find evidence of deception over the registration of the AHT. The outletās editor, Anthony Hall, continues to give the false impression that a large number of journalists and others (including this writer), are contributors, despite the fact that their articles have been republished from other sources without permission.
However, AHT has one characteristic that differentiates it from the others that have been kicked off Facebook: The American and European authors who have appeared in its pages are all real and are advancing their own authentic views. Some are sympathetic to the Islamic Republic, but others are simply angry about U.S. policies: Some are Libertarian anti-interventionists; others are supporters of the 9/11 Truth movement or other conspiracy theories.
One notable independent contributor to AHT is Philip Giraldi, an 18-year veteran of the CIAās Clandestine Service and and an articulate critic of US wars in the Middle East and of Israeli influence on American policy and politics. From its inception in 2015, the AHT has been edited by Anthony Hall, Professor Emeritus at University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada.
In announcing yet another takedown of Iranian Pages in October 2018, Facebookās Gleicher declared that ācoordinated inauthentic behaviorā occurs when āpeople or organizations create networks of accounts to mislead others about who they are what theyāre doing.ā That certainly doesnāt apply to those who provided the content for the American Herald Tribune.
Thus the takedown of the publication by Facebook, with FBI and FireEye encouragement represents a disturbing precedent for future actions against individuals who criticize US foreign policy and outlets that attack corporate media narratives.
Shelby Pierson, the CIA official appointed by then director of national intelligence in July 2019 to chair the inter-agency āElection Executive and Leadership Board,ā appeared to hint at differences in the criteria employed by his agency and the FBI on foreign and alternative media.
In an interview with former acting CIA Director Michael Morrell in February, Pierson said, ā[P]articularly on the [foreign] influence side of the house, when youāre talking about blended content with First Amendment-protected speechā¦against the backdrop of a political paradigm and youāre involving yourself in those activities, I think that makes it more complicatedā (emphasis added).
Further emphasizing the uncertainty surrounding the FBIās methods of online media suppression, she added that the position in question ādoesnāt have the same unanimity that we have in the counterterrorism context.ā
Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist who has covered national security policy since 2005 and was the recipient of Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2012. His most recent book is The CIA Insiderās Guide to the Iran Crisis co-authored with John Kiriakou, just published in February.
Philip Giraldi is a US columnist, commentator and security consultant. He is the Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a role he has held since 2010. Former CIA Operations officer in Europe and Middle East, veteran, and PhD in European History.