YouTube link here.

USAID Funded Censorship, Smears of Americans (Excerpt)

By Lee Fang, Substack, 2/4/25

…The sprawling agency [USAID] has financed groups that have engaged in smear campaigns and efforts to silence prominent American dissident voices…

But most troubling, the foreign assistance agency has financed a network of groups in Ukraine that have spread unsubstantiated claims that American voices in favor of peace negotiations with Russia are agents of the Kremlin.

American government entities face restrictions on spreading such propaganda against domestic targets. The foreign nexus of USAID provides a convenient loophole. American grants and contracts flow, often through third-party intermediaries, to a network of foreign recipients, which can push to silence American journalists and politicians through outside advocacy.

In Ukraine, USAID, through its contractor Internews, supports a network of social media-focused news outlets, including New Voice of Ukraine, VoxUkraine, Detector Media, and the Institute of Mass Information. These news outlets have produced a series of videos and reports targeting economist Jeffrey Sachs, commentator Tucker Carlson, journalist Glenn Greenwald, and Professor John Mearsheimer as figures within a controlled “network of Russian propaganda.”

The influence of these outlets extends far beyond the borders of Ukraine. VoxUkraine, for instance, is an official fact-checking partner to Meta and helps the social media giant censor so-called disinformation. Detector Media similarly produces English-language disinformation reports widely circulated through western media.

Despite branding as independent outlets, these organizations are heavily reliant on USAID…

Full article available here. (I have a paid subscription to Lee Fang’s Substack, so I think this full article may be behind a pay wall for non-subscribers. You can read his in-depth article from April of 2024 on this topic for free at Real Clear Investigations. – Natylie)