FBI aided Ukraine in identifying US government account as ‘disinformation’: House report.

A shocking revelation has emerged in a new report by the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. It appears that a verified U.S. State Department account became entangled in the efforts of the Ukrainian intelligence service to suppress alleged Russian disinformation on social media.

The report reveals that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) provided the FBI with lists of social media accounts that they claimed were spreading Russian disinformation. The SBU then requested the FBI to pass these lists to big tech companies in Silicon Valley, and the FBI complied.

Surprisingly, among the accounts listed as suspected Russian disinformation sources were those operated by American and Canadian journalists, as well as a verified Instagram account belonging to the U.S. State Department, @usaporusski, the official Russian-language account of the State Department. The State Department account was included in the SBU’s spreadsheet of suspect social media accounts.

The SBU alleged that the accounts on their list were distributing content that promoted war, inaccurately reflected events in Ukraine, and justified Russian war crimes in violation of international law.

However, the House report highlights that neither the FBI nor the SBU provided any details about how the State Department account was involved in spreading disinformation.

“These examples show either that the FBI did not meaningfully vet the SBU’s lists or that the FBI endorsed the SBU’s censorship requests knowing full well that they contained American accounts,” the House report states.

The report also reveals that Meta Platforms, Inc., the parent company of Instagram, provided limited information to investigators regarding how it handled the SBU’s requests.

Western Journalists Targeted in SBU Lists

This House report follows Canadian journalist Aaron Maté’s publication of internal communications from Twitter, which revealed that his Twitter account was among dozens included on the SBU’s lists of suspected disinformation sources that were forwarded to Twitter employees in 2022.

Another account flagged by the SBU belongs to Current Time TV, a Russian-language media channel produced by RFE/RL in cooperation with the Voice of America (VOA). Both RFE/RL and VOA are funded by the U.S. government through the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM).

Interestingly, the House report does not mention Maté’s Twitter Files reporting or the fact that the U.S. government-linked Current Time TV was also flagged for potential censorship by the SBU.

The report does, however, mention an American journalist from a self-styled socialist publication who was flagged by the SBU.

Furthermore, journalist Lee Fang’s reporting is referenced in the House document. Fang spoke with an SBU official who admitted that the SBU tends to flag accounts that may include negative reporting about Ukraine, regardless of whether the information is factually flawed or not.

According to Fang’s reporting, when asked about how he identifies disinformation, the Ukrainian intelligence official said, “‘Everything that is against our country, consider it a fake, even if it’s not.’ Right now, for our victory, it is important to have that kind of understanding.”