Donnie-boy's FBI silences anti-Israhell news site

[yankeedoodle]

From Phil Giraldi:

The Strange Demise of The American Herald Tribune
Another independent news source is suppressed
https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/the-strange-demise-of-the-american-herald-tribune/

The latest attack by the U.S. government on an alternative media resource, involves the American Herald Tribune (AHT), which was launched as an alternative news site in 2015. Canadian Professor Anthony Hall, serves as the Editor in Chief of the site. Hall currently lives in Lethbridge Alberta Canada and is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Lethbridge. The name and internet domain base of the site were set up and initially funded by Iranians whom Hall had encountered on one of his several trips to Iran. The news site is admittedly highly critical of American foreign policy and of Israel, which also means that it is supportive of both Iran and Syria. It is strongly opposed to the United States initiating a war with the Iranians. Its contributors include myself as well as scores of writers from the Americas, Europe and Asia and articles have appeared on a wide range of topics.

AHT first came under pressure in February, based on a cyber-security report that alleged that the site was one element in a large disinformation network being run by the Iranian government. The story was picked up by CNN and The Washington Post, with a Post review of the CNN information claiming that though AHT masquerades as a self-professed "'genuinely independent online media outlet' ...cybersecurity experts have determined [it] is part of a far-reaching Iranian influence campaign. The strategy is simple: create a network of inauthentic news sites, then enlist associated accounts on popular platforms to spread the stories not only here but also in Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. American Herald Tribune's modus operandi matches what we've already learned about online disinformation: Adversaries 'launder' their campaigns through sympathetic citizens of target countries, or just citizens they offer money to — from authors on propagandistic or outright deceptive news sites to run-of-the-mill social media users."

The cybersecurity company that wrote the damning report cited by CNN is based in California and is called Fire Eye. It reportedly has numerous contracts with the federal government and its assessment about the Iranian disinformation network provided nothing in the way of actual evidence nor did it actually name AHT, though there has been an independent unsupported claim that AHT was founded in Iran. Fire Eye also rated its "assessments" in the report as being presented with "moderate confidence." In government-speak, that means that the conclusions are mostly speculative, not based on hard evidence, and do not require further action.

Prominent investigative journalist Gareth Porter has also described the social media censorship AHT has endured. His June report maintains that the FBI had encouraged Facebook, Instagram, and Google to remove or restrict ads on AHT specifically. In 2018, AHT's Facebook page was deleted and its Instagram account was closed.

If the allegations regarding AHT's role in a larger conspiracy sounds similar to the false charges made against Russia post 2016, they should, as they come out of the same script of "foreign interference." The CNN coverage of AHT should have been seen as a warning that more was to come. On October 7th the Department of Justice took decisive action when it "...seized 92 domain names that were unlawfully used by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to engage in a global disinformation campaign... According to the seizure documents, four of the domains purported to be genuine news outlets but were actually controlled by the IRGC and targeted the United States for the spread of Iranian propaganda to influence United States domestic and foreign policy in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), and the remainder spread Iranian propaganda to other parts of the world. In addition, the seizure documents describe how all 92 domains were being used in violation of U.S. sanctions targeting both the Government of Iran and the IRGC. We will continue to use all of our tools to stop the Iranian Government from misusing U.S. companies and social media to spread propaganda covertly, to attempt to influence the American public secretly, and to sow discord..."

On November 4th the Justice Department seized an additional 27 alleged IRGC supported domains. The AHT was included in the seizures and the site is now down. All of AHT's accumulated articles archived in the domain are also inaccessible.

What is happening here is an effort by the U.S. government to suppress any news source if it can be plausibly linked to a foreign government that is unfriendly. At the present time that basically means Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. To be sure, AHT publishes authors with dissenting views, who frequently criticize U.S. foreign policy towards Iran in particular and also regarding the Middle East more generally. But to make the case against AHT and the other alleged Iranian disinformation sites, the Justice Department had to claim that the funding for the network was coming from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Force, an organization that it has conveniently labeled as "terrorism supporting." It is a tenuous argument on all levels, but the real damage being done is to the First Amendment right, Freedom of Speech. The ability of Americans in particular to obtain up-to-date and reliable information has been eroding for twenty years or more while the claim that "foreigners" providing alternative viewpoints to small audiences are destroying democracy is ridiculous as there is no evidence that anyone was radicalized by anything through what he or she was hearing or seeing. If Joe Biden's administration continues to move in the same direction as Donald Trump and the mainstream media itself self-censors to go along with the charade, there will be very little freedom left when the next national election rolls around.

From Gareth Porter:

The strange disappearance of American Herald Tribune
https://original.antiwar.com/porter/2020/06/08/fbi-launches-open-attack-on-foreign-alternative-media-outlets-challenging-us-foreign-policy/

In 2018, Facebook deleted the Facebook page of the American Herald Tribune (AHT), a website that publishes commentary from an array of notable authors who are harshly critical of U.S. foreign policy. Gmail, which is run by Google, quickly followed suit by removing ads linked to the outlet, while the Facebook-owned Instagram scrubbed AHT's account altogether.

Tribune editor Anthony Hall reported at the time that the removals occurred at the end of August 2018, but there was no announcement of the move by Facebook. Nor was it reported by the corporate news media until January 2020, when CNN elicited a confirmation from a Facebook spokesman that it had indeed done so in 2018. Furthermore, the FBI was advising Facebook on both Iranian and Russian sites that were banned during that same period of a few days. As Facebook's chief security officer Alex Stamos noted on July 21, 2018, "We have proactively reported our technical findings to US law enforcement, because they have much more information than we do, and may in time be in a position to provide public attribution."

On August 2, a few days following the removal of AHT and two weeks after hundreds of Russian and Iranian Pages had been removed by Facebook, FBI Director Christopher Wray told reporters at a White House briefing that FBI officials had "met with top social media and technology companies several times" during the year, "providing actionable intelligence to better enable them to address abuse of their platforms by foreign actors." He remarked that FBI officials had "shared specific threat indicators and account information so they can better monitor their own platforms."

Cybersecurity firm FireEye, which boasts that it has contracts to support "nearly every department in the United States government," and which has been used by Department of Homeland Security as a primary source of "threat intelligence," also influenced Facebook's crackdown on the Tribune. CNN cited an unnamed official of FireEye stating that the company had "assessed" with "moderate confidence" that the AHT's website was founded in Iran and was "part of a larger influence operation."

The CNN author was evidently unaware that in U.S. intelligence parlance "moderate confidence" suggests a near-total absence of genuine conviction. As the 2011 official "consumer's guide" to US intelligence explained, the term "moderate confidence" generally indicates that either there are still differences of view in the intelligence community on the issue or that the judgment "is credible and plausible but not sufficiently corroborated to warrant higher level of confidence."

CNN also quoted FireEye official Lee Foster's claim that "indicators, both technical and behavioral" showed that American Herald Tribune was part of the larger influence operation. The CNN story linked to a study published by FireEye featuring a "map" showing how Iranian-related media were allegedly linked to one another, primarily by similarities in content. But CNN apparently hadn't bothered to read the study, which did not once mention the American Herald Tribune.

Finally, the CNN piece cited a 2018 tweet by Daily Beast contributor Josh Russell which it said provided "further evidence supporting American Herald Tribune's alleged links to Iran." In fact, his tweet merely documented the AHT's sharing of an internet hosting service with another pro-Iran site "at some point in time." Investigators familiar with the problem know that two websites using the same hosting service, especially over a period of years, is not a reliable indicator of a coherent organizational connection.

CNN did find evidence of deception over the registration of the AHT. The outlet's editor, Anthony Hall, continues to give the false impression that a large number of journalists and others (including this writer), are contributors, despite the fact that their articles have been republished from other sources without permission.

However, AHT has one characteristic that differentiates it from the others that have been kicked off Facebook: The American and European authors who have appeared in its pages are all real and are advancing their own authentic views. Some are sympathetic to the Islamic Republic, but others are simply angry about U.S. policies: Some are Libertarian anti-interventionists; others are supporters of the 9/11 Truth movement or other conspiracy theories.

One notable independent contributor to AHT is Philip Giraldi, an 18-year veteran of the CIA's Clandestine Service and and an articulate critic of US wars in the Middle East and of Israeli influence on American policy and politics. From its inception in 2015, the AHT has been edited by Anthony Hall, Professor Emeritus at University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada.

In announcing yet another takedown of Iranian Pages in October 2018, Facebook's Gleicher declared that "coordinated inauthentic behavior" occurs when "people or organizations create networks of accounts to mislead others about who they are what they're doing." That certainly doesn't apply to those who provided the content for the American Herald Tribune.

Thus the takedown of the publication by Facebook, with FBI and FireEye encouragement represents a disturbing precedent for future actions against individuals who criticize US foreign policy and outlets that attack corporate media narratives.

Shelby Pierson, the CIA official appointed by then director of national intelligence in July 2019 to chair the inter-agency "Election Executive and Leadership Board," appeared to hint at differences in the criteria employed by his agency and the FBI on foreign and alternative media.

In an interview with former acting CIA Director Michael Morrell in February, Pierson said, "[P]articularly on the [foreign] influence side of the house, when you're talking about blended content with First Amendment-protected speech...against the backdrop of a political paradigm and you're involving yourself in those activities, I think that makes it more complicated" (emphasis added).
Further emphasizing the uncertainty surrounding the FBI's methods of online media suppression, she added that the position in question "doesn't have the same unanimity that we have in the counterterrorism context."