Time to Get Rid of Federal 'Disinformation' Bureaus
by Pete Hoekstra • June 21, 2023 at 5:00 am
Recently, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines announced the creation of a new office within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI): The Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC).
Support in Congress means the money grab is on, with federal agencies vying to secure funds for the hot new topic to grow their bureaucracy, influence and power.
Other agencies already involved in disinformation are numerous.... The DHS has, or had, a Countering Foreign Influence Task Force... and a heavily criticized, ridiculed and now disbanded "Disinformation Governance Board."
Is the threat of a new Orwellian "Ministry of Truth" as big as it is toxic?... is this function for the federal government even appropriate?
The American government is extremely capable at generating its own disinformation... Disappointingly, Americans have seen this capability firsthand. Some U.S. intelligence leaders have used their status to aggressively plant disinformation to undermine presidents and influence elections.
Consider Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and FBI Director James Comey, who used their positions to undermine incoming President-elect Donald Trump in January 2017 by leaking and hyping to the media information based on a deceptive briefing they provided to Trump to begin framing him for supposedly colluding with Russia in the disruptive, two-year pretend-investigation known inside the FBI as "Crossfire Hurricane" and outside it as "the Russia Hoax."
The "Russia Hoax," it turned out -- as its perpetrators reportedly knew all along -- had been organized and funded by Trump's presidential election opponent Hillary Clinton -- evidently to deflect attention from her extensive destruction of classified material -- as well as the Democratic National Committee; fraudulently prosecuted by the FBI, and laundered by the Perkins Coie law firm.
Other recent allegations about potentially malign activities by our government abound. The FBI incidentally collected data without a warrant on U.S. citizens 3.4 million times in 2021. Thirty percent of the times the FBI did so, it acted in error or roughly one million times.
The evidence appears to be overwhelming..... When Congress has set lines, the Intelligence Community and law enforcement have been more than willing to overstep their bounds and stretch their legal authorities.
It is time to hold those responsible accountable.... Crucially, given the federal government's repeatedly demonstrated disregard for the law, it is time to consider whether it should even be engaged in this effort. It should not. The American government, based on the First Amendment, should not be anywhere near regulating protected speech. The American government should not be deciding what speech should be regulated and what speech should not.
Recently, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines announced the creation of a new office within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI): The Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC). It would encompass "election threat work, essentially looking at foreign influence and interference in elections, but it also deals with disinformation more generally." Legislation creating the center was passed by Congress and signed into law in 2022.
Although its work nominally deals with disinformation targeting U.S. elections and public opinion within the United States, there are at least two questions that need to be asked: First, is this office essential or duplicative of other ongoing efforts? Second, is this even appropriate work in which the federal government should be engaged?
