USAID Leaks: Censorship As Regime Change
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Leaked files expose how now-defunct intelligence cutout USAID secretly employed the services of shady “counter-disinformation” firm Valent Projects, to censor and suppress online criticism of an illegitimate puppet government Washington installed in Sudan in August 2019. The purpose was to shore up its brutal, corrupt rule in the face of widespread public opposition. The documents suggest this was not the only country where Valent has been used as a cutout to support Western destabilisation and intervention, both covert and overt.
A since-deleted USAID web entry declared the April 2019 ouster of Sudan’s longtime leader Omar al-Bashir represented a “historic” opportunity “to further US interests in Sudan and the region.” The Agency’s Office of Transition Services (OTI), which provided “fast, flexible, short-term assistance targeted at key political transition” - in other words, regime change - engaged in “close cooperation” with “key ministries” within the interim Sudanese government established four months later. This included creating and managing multiple state “media offices” for disseminating propaganda, and countering “mis- and disinformation”.
The leaks show Valent reaped over $1 million from OTI for “counter disinformation and communications support” in Sudan. Suspiciously, this staggering sum is not reflected in the company’s official accounts. Nonetheless, some detail on its OTI work is provided by a June 2021 Meta report on “coordinated inauthentic behavior”. It states a malign network of 53 Facebook accounts, 51 pages, three groups, and 18 Instagram users in Sudan were removed “after reviewing information about some of its activity shared by researchers at Valent Projects.”
In October 2021, Valent chief Amil Khan told Reuters the “inauthentic” Sudanese “network” his company identified was in fact “three times larger” than the nexus removed by Facebook in June that year, “attracting more than 6 million followers and continuing to grow.” He accused Meta of failing to act appropriately. By contrast, administrators of pages fingered by Valent as “inauthentic” emphatically denied the charge, telling Reuters the accusations stemmed from their criticism of the interim government’s “oppressive policies and poor economic and political management.”
Sudan’s deeply unpopular OTI-run government collapsed the same month. During its two years of operation, it gained a woeful reputation for industrial scale corruption, savage attacks on dissidents, banning opposition news outlets, jailing dissidents without charge or trial, and other egregious abuses of power. Evidently, Valent was seeking to systematically defenestrate any and all online detractors of Washington’s faithful client administration on USAID’s dime, in a country where social media is highly influential on public perceptions and actions.
‘Measurable Effects’
Publicly, Valent Projects presents a friendly, democratic face, its in-house ‘experts’ frequently quoted in the mainstream on topics ranging from carbon emission “disinformation” to whether popular rapper Kendrick Lamar has been promoted by online bot networks. Yet, Khan cut his teeth running propaganda and influence operations for murderous CIA and MI6-backed extremist groups during the Syrian dirty war. The USAID leaks make abundantly clear he remains up to his old tricks, under Valent’s benign banner.
Khan’s reprehensible professional background moreover made him an ideal candidate for managing “information operations” in support of the Ukraine proxy war, from the perspective of Project Alchemy. A British Ministry of Defence-created cell of military and intelligence veterans, it is charged with keeping Kiev “fighting at all costs”, plotting oft-suicidal missions for Ukrainian forces to carry out. Questions thus abound as to whether Khan’s secret plot with celebrity ‘journalist’ Paul Mason to destroy The Grayzone, exposed in June 2022, arose from his clandestine mission for Alchemy.
Dubbing him a “ninja” in the field of psychological warfare, Alchemy chiefs approached Khan in April 2022, inviting him to lead their “information” effort in the proxy war. He responded that Valent was already collaborating with Chemonics International, which manages the Partnership Fund for a Resilient Ukraine. Set up by Western governments to funnel support of all kinds to Kiev, PFRU is now run by the British Foreign Office, in direct “collaboration” with Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration.
Khan explained this project was concerned with “tracking pro-Russian disinfo targeting key audiences in key countries…with the aim of influencing policy in a pro-Russian direction,” and countering attempts “to turn key audiences against the idea of support for Ukraine.” He bragged how Valent had “past performance in identifying, monitoring and closing such activity.” Khan enquired of Alchemy, “would something like that be of interest?”
Not long after this email exchange, Valent submitted a pitch to PFRU. The firm proposed to “map audiences critical to the Kremlin’s efforts, and identify opportunities to impact their narratives,” thus supporting Kiev’s “strategic communications efforts.” If successful, Ukrainian officials would be provided with “a stream of ‘narrative opportunities’” to “influence” and “engage” audiences not only in Russia, but “other key states” including India and Turkey, via news outlets, social media, and other information sources.
“One strand” of the project would “focus on mapping Russian internal audiences critical to the Kremlin’s plans with the aim of identifying opportunities to influence.” This would, it was projected, increase Kiev’s ability “to affect measurable attitudinal and behavioural change amongst key Russian audiences.” Meanwhile, “Russia’s ability to politically absorb negative conflict-related impacts,” such as “manpower losses” and “economic damage”, would be “degraded.”
The operation’s “second strand” would identify and monitor “social media networks delivering Russian information operations” overseas. Analysing the “content” and “engagement patterns” of these purported “networks” would “produce streams of highly specific, time sensitive information designed to present [Ukrainian] stakeholders opportunities to achieve influence.” The document bragged that “the approach and specific methodologies outlined” therein were “based on work [Valent Projects] has already conducted for multiple donors with measurable effects.”
While no examples are cited in the leaked file, an obvious candidate would be Project Aurelius. This was an information warfare effort waged while Khan was based in Amman, Jordan, secret headquarters of a variety of British intelligence cutouts, with which he was employed during the Syrian dirty war. It sought to undermine Russia’s military support of Damascus, and Vladimir Putin’s rule, by “exposing Russians to the complicated reality their government” faced in the country.
The Project’s leaked outline claimed “Russia’s position in Syria is more costly and less successful than the Kremlin is admitting,” and Putin’s position domestically and internationally was “fragile”. The objective therefore was to present Russia’s Syria intervention “as depicted” in British intelligence-created and run Syrian opposition media outlets “to key Russian audiences, including mainstream news consumers.” This “mechanism” could easily be constructed by “[tasking] Syrian opposition media activists” – in other words, British assets – “to capture raw material that undermines Russian claims.”
The Project reportedly already had “potential points of entry into Russian mainstream media,” a team of “Russian activists based in Ukraine with access to foreign journalists and opinion influencers with media profiles,” and “activists able to establish and run Russian social media pages,” including “Russian opposition social media networks.” Funding would appear to come from a “Syrian-run media activist group”, ostensibly financed by “donations from wealthy Syrians”, which would send funds to a “a Russian-run similar entity…registered in Ukraine.”
‘Particularly Problematic’
Another leaked Valent file shows the firm was employed by Thomson Reuters Foundation, the world-famous news agency’s “charitable” wing, “to gauge audience trust levels towards independent media in Ukraine.” The firm conducted extensive analysis of 188 separate news outlets in Kiev, operating “across a variety of platforms, from websites to Facebook pages and Telegram channels.” It identified four separate audiences; “nationalist grannies”; “tech-savvy professionals”; “Russia First fans”; and “Ukrainian ‘Proud Boys’”, referencing the far-right US militia. The findings were delivered in March 2021.
Valent found “the most trusted information sources” in Ukraine “tend to be individuals who could best be described as ‘celebrity bloggers’,” as “larger media outlets…are assumed to be promoting an oligarch’s interests.” Those “celebrity bloggers” who could “communicate a certain comfort level with Russian culture and language while maintaining a dispassionate but critical tone on Kremlin policy” were concluded to be “the most likely actors in the Ukrainian information space to attract the widest cross section of audiences.”
Such was the depth of Valent’s research, the firm was “confident” in making a number of “recommendations to news outlets operating in the Ukrainian information environment.” This included developing outlets “around real-world personalities,” avoiding “the appearance of narrow tribalism,” and “[showing] respect to Russian culture and history” when “criticising Russian policy.” Meanwhile, “long-form content” should focus on “newsworthy interviews”, with outlets posting “appropriate content” across platforms “in an integrated manner around a central narrative…[tailored] to audience profiles.”
It is uncertain why Thomson Reuters Foundation commissioned Valent to identify the most popular independent media outlets and personalities, and effective propaganda strategies, in Ukraine. Nonetheless, The Grayzone has previously revealed the Foundation groomed a secret army of pro-Western Russian journalists under a covert Foreign Office operation, to “weaken the Russian state’s influence”. More gravely, this journalist has also exposed how Reuters and TRF created a British intelligence-funded astroturf opposition media outlet in Egypt, Aswat Masriya, which was central to Cairo’s brutal 2013 military coup.
Strikingly, leaked TRF files related to Aswat Masriya proposed repeating the exercise in Kiev, “timed for the run up to the 2019 elections.” That vote saw Zelensky elected by landslide, on a peace platform. This project was ostensibly inspired by “a lack of in-depth, independent news coverage” in Ukraine, which the Foundation considered “particularly problematic at key political junctures such as elections, especially when vested interests seek to influence particular outcomes.” In this context, the timing of Valent’s research effort for TRF is rendered rather suspect.
In March 2021, Zelensky issued a decree, outlining a “strategy for the de-occupation and reintegration” of “temporarily occupied territory” in Crimea and Donbass. It sketched a blueprint for the military to recapture both territories. Immediately, Kiev’s forces began massing in the south and east of Ukraine, a key precursor to the proxy conflict that erupted in February 2022. Perhaps Zelensky’s British intelligence backers wished to ensure in advance local “independent” media figures and outlets were supportive of the President’s “strategy” to ignite war with Russia?
If there is anyone else doing this work in such detail I have yet to read it.
Peerless analysis of the sponsorship of regime change by the Only Global Power model. Well done Kit. Again.
Bravo