Reuters: The CIA's secret operation in China, ordered by former President Trump

2024-03-14 20:04:23, Kosova & Bota CNA

Reuters: The CIA's secret operation in China, ordered by former President

In his second year in office, former President Donald Trump authorized the CIA to launch a covert campaign on Chinese social media aimed at turning public opinion in China against the government, Reuters news agency was told. former US officials with direct knowledge of this top secret operation.

Three former officials told the Reuters news agency that the CIA created a small team of operatives who used fake identities online to spread negative news about the Chinese government led by Xi Jinping, while simultaneously spreading disparaging information to the media. international. This campaign started in 2019 has never been reported in the media.

Over the past decade, China has rapidly expanded its international presence, with new military pacts, trade agreements and business partnerships with developing countries.

The CIA team spread accusations that members of the ruling Communist Party were hiding ill-gotten gains abroad and that China's One Belt One Road initiative was corrupt and an exploitation of developing countries by financing infrastructure projects.

Although U.S. officials did not provide concrete details about these operations, they said the disparaging information had some basis in fact, although it was secretly injected by intelligence operatives with false identities. The operation was intended to sow fear among senior Chinese officials as well as force the Chinese government to devote its resources to tracking intrusions into Beijing's tightly controlled Internet, two of the former U.S. officials said. "We wanted them to look for ghosts," said one of these officials.

Chelsea Robinson, a spokeswoman for the CIA, declined to comment on the existence of the program, its objectives, or the results it had.

A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that the announcement of this CIA initiative shows that the US government uses "the space of public opinion and media platforms as tools to spread disinformation and manipulate international public opinion."

The CIA operation was a response to years of China's aggressive covert efforts aimed at increasing its global influence. During his presidency, Mr. Trump demanded a tougher response to China than his predecessors. The CIA's campaign marks a return to the methods that characterized Washington's efforts against the former Soviet Union. "The Cold War is back," said Tim Weiner, author of a book on the history of political warfare.

The Reuters news agency was unable to reveal the effect of these covert operations, or whether the administration of President Joe Biden has continued this CIA program. Kate Waters, spokeswoman for the National Security Council, declined to comment on the existence of the program, or whether it remains active. Two historians of intelligence activities told Reuters that when the White House authorizes the CIA for a particular covert action, the order often remains in effect during different administrations.

Former President Trump, now the Republican front-runner for president, has suggested he will take an even tougher approach to China if he is re-elected president in November. His spokesmen, as well as two people who worked as his national security advisers during the year the authorization for the covert operation was signed, John Bolton and Robert O'Brien, declined to comment.

The operation against Beijing carried great risks of escalating tensions with the United States, given China's economic power and its room to strike back through trade, said Paul Heer, former senior CIA analyst for East Asia. He himself learned about the existence of this operation from the announcement of the Reuters news agency. A similar example was the case of Australia calling in 2020 for an investigation within China into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, Beijing blocked billions of dollars from trade with Australia through agricultural tariffs.

Former President Trump's 2019 order came after years of warnings from the US intelligence community and media reports that China was using bribery and threats to win the support of developing countries embroiled in geopolitical disputes, while also tried to sow division in the United States through front organizations.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Beijing follows "the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries and does not interfere in the internal affairs of the United States".

A year earlier, former President Trump gave the CIA expanded powers to conduct cyber operations against adversaries of the United States, following multiple Russian and Chinese cyber attacks on American organizations, the news site Yahoo News reported. Reuters news agency could not independently confirm this.

Reuters: The CIA's secret operation in China, ordered by former President

At the entrance to CIA headquarters

Former officials described the 2019 order as more ambitious. The order authorized the CIA to take action not only in China, but also in other countries around the world where the United States and China compete for influence. Four former US officials said the operation targeted public opinion in Southeast Asia, Africa and the South Pacific region.

"The feeling was that China was coming at us with steel baseball bats and we were defending ourselves with wooden bats," said a former national security official with direct knowledge of the authorization.

Three former officials said the text of the authorization was drafted by Matt Pottinger, then a senior official on the National Security Council. The text cited allegations of Beijing's use of malign influence, intellectual property theft and increased military presence as threats to US national security, one of the former US officials said.

Mr Pottinger told the Reuters news agency that he does not comment on "the accuracy or inaccuracy of claims about US intelligence activities", adding that "it would not be fair to say that I would have any concrete knowledge of the operations of the United States". discovery of the United States".

Secret messaging allows the United States to spread ideas in places where censorship might prevent information from coming to light, or in areas where audiences would not give much credence to the U.S. government's statements, said political scientist Loch Johnson. at the University of Georgia, which studies the use of such tactics.

Covert intelligence campaigns were common during the Cold War, when the CIA distributed 80 to 90 articles a day against the Soviet Union, Mr. Johnson said. According to the now declassified documents, in the 1950s, for example, the CIA opened an astrology magazine in East Germany to publish gloomy predictions for communist leaders.

The covert propaganda campaign against Beijing can backfire, says former CIA analyst Paul Heer. China could use evidence of the CIA's influence campaign to bolster its decades-old accusations of shadowy Western subversion efforts, helping Beijing win more support in developing countries that view it with doubt Washington.

The message would be: "Look at how the United States interferes in the internal affairs of other countries and rejects the principle of peaceful coexistence," Mr. Heer said. "And there are places around the world where this message will take place."

U.S. influence operations could also endanger dissidents, opposition groups critical of China and independent journalists who could be falsely portrayed as tools of the CIA, said Thomas Reed, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who has written a book about the history of the political war./ VOA