State Department’s GEC office should close over ‘censorship’: Issa
Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA), a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has called for the closure of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) due to allegations of domestic censorship. In a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Issa expressed concerns about the GEC’s activities under the Biden administration, which he claims involve the “outright censorship” of American citizens. He criticized the agency for crafting internal press guidance that was allegedly used to discredit Representative Jim Banks (R-IN) and journalists reporting on the GEC’s connections to censorship efforts.
Issa highlighted that the GEC’s tactics include labeling dissenters as “Russian stooges,” which he argued conflates U.S. citizens with adversaries and undermines legitimate political opinions and reporting. His letter follows an earlier communication from Banks regarding the 2023 press guidance, which was said to misrepresent Banks’ quotes in a manner implying collaboration with Russian media.
The controversy intensified as reports emerged regarding the GEC’s financial support of organizations like the Global Disinformation Index, which has been accused of targeting conservative media. Issa insisted that the GEC’s claims of not engaging in domestic activities are misleading, noting that their operations extend into domestic censorship, contrary to the agency’s stated mandate. A provision in the annual State Department appropriations bill seeks to restrict future funding to the GEC amidst these allegations.
State Department’s GEC should close over ‘censorship’: Darrell Issa
EXCLUSIVE — A senior House Foreign Affairs Committee member is calling for a State Department office to be shuttered due to its “domestic censorship activities,” according to a letter.
In the letter, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) raised concerns to Secretary of State Antony Blinken over “the outright censorship of Americans by the State Department under your tenure.”
The House Republican zeroed in on the agency’s Global Engagement Center, slamming the Biden-Harris administration for crafting internal press guidance that Issa argued was used to “smear” Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) and reporters covering the GEC’s ties to apparent censorship efforts in the United States.
“By smearing anyone who disagrees with it as a Russian stooge, this network conflates U.S. citizens with a U.S. adversary, as State Department talking points did to my colleague Representative Jim Banks and the award-winning journalists Gabe Kaminsky and Matt Taibbi in a scheming sleight of hand that ruled out of bounds political opinions and fact-based reporting it opposed but cannot refute,” Issa wrote in the letter to Blinken late Tuesday.
The letter comes after Banks sent his own letter earlier this month to Blinken over the 2023 press guidance. The Indiana Republican opened an investigation into a “sloppy and hypocritical lie” from the State Department over it appearing to try to link him falsely to Russia in the press guidance.
The leaked press guidance was first reported on earlier this month by the New York Post. It was issued internally to determine how to respond to Washington Examiner reporting on the GEC’s funding of a British group blacklisting conservative media outlets from advertising dollars, as well as Taibbi’s “Twitter Files” coverage of the GEC seeking to counter alleged COVID-19 disinformation.
The press guidance included a misquotation from Banks that appeared in a Russian media outlet covering a 2023 story by the Washington Examiner on the GEC. In the original quote, which Banks had given to the Washington Examiner last year, the lawmaker raised concerns over the GEC’s $100,000 grant in 2021 to the Global Disinformation Index, a group targeting outlets in the U.S.
“The intentional misquotation gives the impression that I had been speaking with a Russian propaganda outlet,” Banks told Blinken in his letter.
In his letter this week, Issa told Blinken that the GEC’s assertions that it “does not engage in domestic activity” are untrue. The GEC, an interagency group working with the Defense Department and other agencies, is mandated to act internationally.
But Republicans say the GEC’s funding of the Global Disinformation Index, among other groups, shows that it has unjustly become involved with domestic censorship groups — which the GEC has long denied. A provision through the annual State Department appropriations bill, which passed the House this summer and will be negotiated in the Senate, seeks to prohibit future funding to the GEC over the funding to GDI.
Earlier this month, the Republican-led House Small Business Committee published a report on the GEC that argued the interagency group promoted “tech start-ups and other small businesses in the disinformation detection space to private sector entities with domestic censorship capabilities.”
“The GEC is too intertwined with this ecosystem to be reformed, particularly as a matter of grants, outlook, and staffing,” Issa wrote in the letter. “The United States critically needs a peacetime information function that counters with the truth the increasingly sophisticated adversaries opposed to America’s national interest. A functional State department would begin the overdue task of working in good faith with Congress to craft an enduring, credible solution.”
“Mr. Secretary: It is time for this failed entity to be held accountable. It is time to bring an end to the Global Engagement Center,” Issa added.
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