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Washington, D.C. Today, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX), Subcommittee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman Brian Mast (R-FL), Subcommittee on Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations Chairman Chris Smith, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), Rep. Keith Self (R-TX), Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL), and Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) sent an oversight letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken regarding censorship perpetrated or facilitated by the Global Engagement Center (GEC). Last year, after the States Departments Inspector General issued a detailed report chronicling inappropriate actions by the GEC, members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee determined it was appropriate to delay reauthorizing the GEC until issues related to internal staffing, organizational structure, and policy priorities were resolved.

Since that time, however, additional news has come to light that suggests the GEC continues to stray from its founding mission through its subsidized censorship of free speech and disfavored opinions particularly by established conservative media and individuals. The committee intends to exercise its full legislative and oversight jurisdiction over the GECs lack of transparency.

The GECs founding mission, effectively, was to provide a ready resource for the truth about America and our fight against global terror, particularly ISIS, the members wrote. [But now we] are forced to wonder about the authority by which the GEC justifies its mission creep, and the direction of its current evolutionary trajectory. Congress originally authorized the GEC to support the development and dissemination of fact-based narratives and analysis to counter propaganda and disinformation directed at the United States and United States allies and partner nations. While the GEC performs some unquestionably important work, it has also provided social media companies with access to tech applications that detect and either knock down or flag malign-foreign-influence activity, but, according to the FBI, also might accidentally pick up U.S. people[s] information.

The full text of the letter can be found here and below.

Last year, after the States Departments Inspector General issued a detailed report1 chronicling inappropriate actions by the Global Engagement Center (GEC), members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee determined it was appropriate to delay reauthorizing the GEC until issues related to internal staffing, organizational structure, and policy priorities were resolved.

Since that time, however, additional news has come to light that suggests the GEC continues to stray from its founding mission through its subsidized censorship of free speech and disfavored opinions particularly by established conservative media and individuals through grants, partnerships, and awards to entities including the Global Disinformation Index, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, the Atlantic Councils Digital Forensics Research Lab, and Moonshot CVE. The GEC also appears to take the official position that populism whether at home or abroad is an affront to democracy and the First Amendment rights of all Americans. For example:

In 2021, the GEC spent $275,000 producing a counter-disinformation video game that programmed audiences to associate citizen critiques of government waste, fraud, and abuse with a social media disinformation campaign.

In 2020, the GEC produced a similar counter-disinformation video game explicitly targeting political misinformation, apparently modeled off the U.S. 2020 presidential election cycle.

In the above counter-disinformation video games, the GEC selected and supported the University of Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab, whose recent disinformation research includes:

Targeting U.S. conservatives

Targeting climate change deniers

Targeting vaccine skeptics

Targeting election deniers

The GECs founding mission, effectively, was to provide a ready resource for the truth about America and our fight against global terror, particularly ISIS. We therefore are forced to wonder about the authority by which the GEC justifies its mission creep, and the direction of its current evolutionary trajectory.

Congress originally authorized the GEC to support the development and dissemination of fact- based narratives and analysis to counter propaganda and disinformation directed at the United States and United States allies and partner nations. While the GEC performs some unquestionably important work, it has also provided social media companies with access to tech applications that detect and either knock down or flag malign-foreign-influence activity, but, according to the FBI, also might accidentally pick up U.S. people[s] information.

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibits government officials from censoring disfavored speakers and viewpoints. Merely labeling speech misinformation or disinformation does not strip away First Amendment protections, and government officials may not circumvent the First Amendment by inducing, threatening, and/or colluding with private entities to suppress protected speech.

In 2019, Richard Stengel, the very first head of the GEC after its 2016 founding, published an op-ed in the Washington Post calling for an effective end to the First Amendment. This fact calls into question not only the founder, but the founding vision of the GEC itself. Stengel went on to say in a televised interview: [T]he basis of the First Amendment, the marketplace of ideas model, is actually not working. Marketplace of ideas is this notion that good ideas will drive out bad ideas. Well, it was kind of a mystical notion coming from Milton and John Stewart Mill and that doesnt really happen anymore Im actually very sympathetic now to the U.S. adopting some versions of hate speech laws in Europe.

Due to the lack of transparency regarding the GEC, and its potential violations of the Constitution, I write to request that you provide the committee the following documents and information no later than May 11, 2023:

All documents and communications between the GEC and any entity with a domestic presence in the United States, including media outlets, mentioning disinformation, disinfo, misinformation, misinfo or malinformation.

All documents and communications regarding the U.S. Department of States contracts, grants, cooperative agreements, or other agreements for assistance covered in section 200.40 Federal financial assistance of the OMB Uniform Grant Guidance to any of the following entities:

Material preservation is essential for Congress to conduct a comprehensive fact-finding investigation into actions by the GEC and grantees in stifling, censoring, and silencing conservative speech through the guise of labeling it as misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation.

More specifically, this request should also be construed as an instruction to preserve all documents, communications, and other information, including electronic information and metadata, that is or may be potentially responsive to this congressional inquiry. This includes electronic messages about the determined topic that are sent using official and personal accounts or drives, including records created using text messages, phone-based messaging applications, or encryption software. For purposes of this request, preserve includes taking reasonable steps to prevent the partial or full destruction, alteration, deletion, shredding, wiping, relocation, migration, theft, mutilation, reckless, or negligent handling of responsive documents, communications, and information that could render the information incomplete or inaccessible.

Please notify all relevant current and former employees, colleagues, officials, contractors, subcontractors, and consultants who may have worked on documents, communications, or information that is or would be potentially responsive to this congressional inquiry. Thank you for your cooperation in this critical oversight matter.

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Originally posted here:
McCaul, HFAC Members Demand Answers on GEC's Role in ... - House Foreign Affairs Committee