Pentagon BUSTED…But They Aren’t Admitting Everything
RIGHT WING NEWS HOUR | By Mark Megahan | September 20, 2022
The Pentagon may be confessing to clandestine Psy-Ops on Facebook and other social media sites but they aren’t admitting everything. Only the parts they have already been busted cold for. The brass ordered a “sweeping audit of how it conducts clandestine information warfare.” They don’t have much choice since “major social media companies identified and took offline fake accounts suspected of being run by the U.S. military in violation of the platforms’ rules.”
Facebook infiltrated by trolls
Facebook and Twitter have tight new policies and the Pentagon got caught in a jam. According to Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, in a statement last week, he “instructed the military commands that engage in psychological operations online to provide a full accounting of their activities by next month.”
The Imperial Palace is asking awkward questions and “federal agencies expressed mounting concerns over the Defense Department’s attempted manipulation of audiences.”
The ones they got busted for were all overseas but political watchdogs are convinced there have been a whole bunch of domestic ones, too. The little side job Psychological Warfare Captain Emily Rainey had in her spare time, for instance.
This is BIG.
— Sinan Aral (@sinanaral) September 19, 2022
Many suspected the US engages in influence operations. @Facebook & @Twitter just pointed the finger directly at the US government over this & the Pentagon openned a sweeping review of clandestine psychological operations as a result. 😳👇🏽https://t.co/CTJBlZ4sok
She bused a whole bunch of her friends in for the barbarian invasion on January 6, 2021. They fired her for it and she isn’t talking. She isn’t saying what her Facebook account name is either.
The DOD isn’t happy to confess that “more than 150 bogus personas and media sites created in the United States” were ripped down from Twitter and Facebook in “recent years.” Those “familiar with the matter said they were within the past two or three.”
The scandal was “disclosed last month by internet researchers Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory.” They didn’t point the finger at the Pentagon. “While the researchers did not attribute the sham accounts to the U.S. military, two officials familiar with the matter said that U.S. Central Command is among those whose activities are facing scrutiny.”
Anonymous rats tell all
Those who talked to Washington Post “spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations.” Some of the takedowns were recent. “Posts from the summer that advanced anti-Russia narratives citing the Kremlin’s ‘imperialist‘ war in Ukraine and warning of the conflict’s direct impact on Central Asian countries.”
Experts note that its “significant” that “they found that the pretend personas — employing tactics used by countries such as Russia and China — did not gain much traction, and that overt accounts actually attracted more followers.” Facebook analytics data never lies.
Centcom, “has purview over military operations across 21 countries in the Middle East, North Africa and Central and South Asia” from their HQ in Tampa, Florida.
Capt. Emily Rainey insisted she acted within Army regulations and that no one in her group entered the Capitol or broke the law.https://t.co/zfRnD8gqlM
— Howard Altman (@haltman) January 11, 2021
Pentagon press secretary Air Force Brigadier General Patrick Ryder put out a statement noting that the military’s information operations “support our national security priorities.” They are supposed to follow the law. “We are committed to enforcing those safeguards,” he promises, with his hand in the Facebook cookie jar.
Spokespersons for Facebook and Twitter declined to comment, which is no surprise. “The accounts taken down included a made-up Persian-language media site that shared content reposted from the U.S.-funded Voice of America Farsi and Radio Free Europe.”
“Another, it said, was linked to a Twitter handle that in the past had claimed to operate on behalf of Centcom.“
