The U.S. State Department is planning to close a center that aimed to combat disinformation but ended up targeting some Americans, the U.S. government has announced.
Government lawyers said in a Dec. 9 court filing that the State Department’s Global Engagement Center is likely to be terminated on Dec. 23, absent congressional action.
A funding bill in 2016 provided money for the center for eight years. Congress has not yet acted to extend the funding, and lawyers said they understand that more funding is unlikely to be authorized.
Lawmakers in the recently released National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2017 did not include more funding for the center.
Per legal requirements, the department notified Congress that it plans to close the center and reassign staffers to other offices and bureaus if funding does not come through.
“While we are disappointed that the NDAA text released over the weekend does not include a multiyear extension of the Global Engagement Center, the Department remains hopeful that Congress extends this important mandate through other means before the December 24th termination date,” a State Department spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.
The center has been at the center of multiple legal cases for participating in an initiative called the Election Integrity Partnership, which flagged social media posts that employees from the center and other entities alleged might contain disinformation.
In one instance, the center flagged an Instagram post showing a video of a poll worker purportedly modifying ballots. A center employee said that the post appeared to be part of a “misinformation campaign.”
The center separately flagged the accounts of thousands of Americans, at least some of whom were banned by Twitter, files released by the company showed.
The center’s website says its mission is “to direct, lead, synchronize, integrate, and coordinate U.S. Federal Government efforts to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States, its allies, and partner nations.”
“We do not target American audiences,” Daniel Kimmage, a center employee, said during a deposition. “The GEC’s concern is with the actions of foreign propaganda actors. The GEC’s concern stops there. It doesn’t extend to the speech of Americans.”
Presented with evidence that showed the center flagging a YouTube channel run by Americans, Kimmage said he did not think it resulted in any action being taken or recommended.
The State Department spokesperson said this week that the center should remain in operation because “we need to ensure that the capability to identify and counter foreign disinformation overseas is maintained.”
The notice of the center’s impending closure was filed in a case brought in 2023 by two conservative media outlets. The outlets said that the State Department and center officials worked to create blacklists that designated them as purveyors of disinformation, with the end goal of making them unprofitable.
A lawyer representing the outlets declined to comment.
From The Epoch Times