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https://www.mintpressnews.com/leaked-files-dhs-disinformation-government-board-secret/282711/

Leaked Files Show DHS “Ministry of Truth” Lives On In Secret

On October 31, journalists Lee Fang and Ken Klippenstein released a trove of leaked documents exposing how, in recent years, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) desire – and ability – to curb speech in both online and offline realms has ramped up significantly.

Along the way, a government department ostensibly founded to defend Americans from terrorist violence has become the single biggest threat to free speech in the U.S. What is more, the DHS is being actively abetted in this malign mission by major tech firms.

These papers show that officials at the highest levels of the Department are maneuvering to establish a decisive stranglehold over the flow of information in news outlets and on social media platforms, while covertly co-opting and infiltrating civil society groups as “clearing houses” for government propaganda, and consistently deceiving Americans as to their true intentions.

Furthermore, they are preparing to deploy invasive technology developed by Israeli special forces to spy on the opinions and utterances of everyday citizens – and may well already be doing so.

With the specter of “disinformation” being talked up almost daily as a dire threat to public health and safety, and definitions of the supposed phenomenon shifting constantly according to political need, there is no telling who could be branded an enemy of the state, and subject to surveillance, harassment, censorship, or worse, as a result of this dangerous shift.

The most explosive documents relate to the highly controversial DHS Disinformation Government Board’s (DGB) germination, and its continuation via other means following purported closure.

The Board’s launch in April this year was met with much mainstream hullabaloo. Corporate journalists, think tank pundits and government officials alike hailed the initiative as a groundbreaking innovation in the battle against domestic and foreign-borne “disinformation”, with fawning praise reserved for its chief Nina Jankowicz, a 33-year-old former Ukrainian government communications advisor.

However, clarity on the Board’s precise purpose, functions, budget and objectives was initially unforthcoming, greatly reinforcing already ample anxieties of individuals and organizations outside the media bubble. Substantive and vital concerns were raised by rights groups and dissident lawmakers about its constitutionality, and whether it would serve as a state censorship mechanism. Many comparisons were drawn with George Orwell’s nightmarish Ministry of Truth.

Jankowicz’s shameful history of defaming independent news outlets, such as The Grayzone, as “Russian disinformation”, crazed attacks on WikiLeaks and its jailed founder Julian Assange, eager advocacy of the fraudulent Trump-Russia dossier, and support for suppressing the New York Post’s fatual reporting on Hunter Biden’s emails, likewise handed critics abundant fodder.

Subsequent assurances from DHS officials that the Board would have no operational powers, but simply advise government departments on how to counter disinformation, did nothing to quell the disquiet. Such was the furor, the DGB was placed on indefinite “pause” by Department officials after just three weeks, then reportedly closed outright in August.

The leaked files make a mockery of the repeated insistence of DHS officials that the DGB wasn’t intended to actively dictate what’s true and false, or aggressively police the information citizens can and can’t be told, and by whom. And they strongly suggest the DGB’s public “shutdown” was pure subterfuge.

DHS joins FBI war on “subversive data”

Among the documents are minutes of a March 1 meeting of the DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Cybersecurity Advisory Committee, which has overall control of disinformation policy within the Department.

The Committee is composed of officials drawn from numerous government agencies and contractors – primarily in the tech sphere – as well as civil society actors. At the time, this included Twitter’s head of legal policy, trust and safety, Vijaya Gadde, University of Washington professor Kate Starbird, and a J.P. Morgan executive whose name has been redacted.

The Committee met to be briefed by FBI Foreign Influence Task Force chief Laura Dehmlow, “regarding the FBI’s roles and responsibilities in combating foreign influence,” in advance of the DGB’s formation eight weeks later. The minutes speak to a determination on the part of attendees to significantly expand the scale and influence of DHS counter-disinformation efforts, with almost every representative making an active contribution to discussions at some stage.

Dehmlow kicked off proceedings by explaining the work of her Task Force, which was established in 2016 to counteract “Russian influence” in that year’s Presidential election.

Rapidly, “based on mission scope,” the Task Force became an 80-person-strong dedicated component within the FBI’s counterintelligence division, and established a charter of “Foreign Malign Information,” which is defined as “subversive data utilized to drive a wedge between the populace and the government.” This is likely a euphemism for any information that could inspire distrust in the U.S. empire among its citizens at home.

Dehmlow added that her unit “does not perform narrative or content-based analysis,” prompting a participant – name redacted – to suggest CISA “might have a role based on the subcommittee helping to define the narrative so the whole of government approach could be leveraged.” Then followed a discussion between Committee members on “organizational information sharing between the public/private sector; how to collaborate across channels; driving resiliency building and education” about disinformation.

Ominously, “when asked to define a goal” for tackling disinformation, Dehmlow stated, “we need a media infrastructure that is held accountable.” While the senior Bureau operative acknowledged her Task Force “engages with policymakers on the Hill and appropriate partners for information exchange,” there was no mention of her existing, active role in holding major online platforms “accountable”.

Dehmlow is a named defendant in a May lawsuit brought against the Biden administration by the Attorney Generals of Louisiana and Missouri over allegations of government collusion with tech giants to censor inconvenient news reports. A recent court filing reveals she was “involved in communications between the FBI and Meta that led to Facebook’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

That connivance successfully – albeit temporarily – resulted in Facebook and Twitter banning the sharing of any and all links to online articles about or even referencing the laptop’s damning contents, in advance of the November 2020 Presidential election. This was justified on the fraudulent basis the story was a potential Russian information operation.

Other portions of the filing reference how Dehmlow was also intimately connected to ongoing efforts by her Task Force to compel “suppression of election-related speech” on other social networks, including LinkedIn, being “routinely included” in meetings related to “social media suppression” with company top brass.

In any event, at the meeting’s conclusion, attendees were asked for “additional comments with regards to the subcommittee’s way forward,” which led to a “series of questions”, the answers to which it was felt would help the DHS “move toward providing an approach or recommendation” for dealing with disinformation in conjunction with the FBI, being drawn up. Chief among them: “how do we get to push the envelope to obtain traction in this area?”

The answer to this bold, aspirational query was markedly unsophisticated. One participant – name redacted – suggested finding an organization that “has done appropriate social media monitoring for the government,” leading CISA’s Kim Wyman to cite a Stanford study recommending social media companies not promote disinformation peddlers, “in order to reduce the promulgation of information from these people.” Resultantly, Gadde ever so helpfully revealed that Twitter operated a “three strike system” to “de-amplify” such “bad actors.”

In sum, the subcommittee’s envelope-pushing, traction-obtaining grand vision was simply to identify social media users sharing the “wrong” things via a third party, then reporting offending accounts until they were eventually shadowbanned or permanently suspended.

Gadde was one of a great many Twitter staffers purged by the social network’s new owner, Elon Musk, after he took control in late October. It is unknown whether her enthusiastic collaboration with CISA played any role in her contract’s termination, or if she was simply victim of an indiscriminate mass defenestration of lavishly-remunerated executives.

Nonetheless, the leaked files show Gadde offered up a wealth of sensitive insider insight into how Twitter operates in respect of “disinformation”, illuminating several ways the DHS could weaponize the platform for its own ends, while pushing for the scope of the Department’s disinformation busting activities to be greatly increased.

Creating covert narrative “clearing houses”

Minutes of subsequent meetings show how CISA leaped on the DGB’s launch to broaden its own powers and purview, then replace the body after its ignominious collapse.

Initially, it was expected the Committee would act as the DGB’s operational wing, enforcing its directives and cracking down on the spread of particular stories and narratives via direct media and social media interventions.

Several discussions across April centered around optimal means of “[amplifying] trusted information,” and seeding “counter-narratives” to “disinformation” across the media, to ensure journalists proactively sang from the same hymn sheet should information or perspectives emerge that the government wished to conceal or discredit.

All along, Gadde took a leading role, variously suggesting “keeping the aperture of recommendations broad regarding media,” rather than “limiting recommendations to just social media,” and considering carefully “how many counter-narratives an organization can issue” per incident, to avoid muddying the waters too much.

She also disclosed that Twitter “evaluates the level of harm done in disinformation incidents,” although further elucidation – such as whether this is shared, or calculated, in conjunction with an external entity such as the DHS – was unforthcoming.

The solution, proposed by director of CISA’s Election Security Initiative Geoff Hale, was to outsource the work of battling disinformation to cutouts, using NGOs and nonprofits as a “clearing house” for “counter-narratives,” in order to “avoid the appearance of government propaganda.”

Another Committee member – name redacted – concurred that “designating multiple voices as the clearing house so there is not one trusted voice” was ideal, thereby creating the false illusion of unanimity across multiple ostensibly independent sources, when the ultimate origin of all these “counter-narrative” was the Department of Homeland Security.

Another core consideration was “pre-socializing” Committee’s work before and after launch, and “socializing” it after. This meant contacting rights groups and lawmakers to brief and acquaint them with the body’s activities in advance of it becoming public. Recommendations for conducting this PR offensive were distributed among the group in advance, with particular emphasis on how to answer difficult questions related to matters such as “surveillance and monitoring” of private citizens should they arise.

The DGB being placed on pause did nothing to halt these initiatives. In fact, lessons were learned from that debacle, with the list of entities to be brought onside with the Committee’s work, now it would be operating solo, extended to include rights groups such as the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF). The EFF prominently criticized the Board and demanded assurances from Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that it not police speech, online or otherwise.

Other civil society organizations in the Committee’s crosshairs included the Brennan Center for Justice. Gadde added to the list, naming similar entities Twitter had partnered with in the past, “in the event the group would like to reach out to any additional individuals” – input offered despite angsting about her dual roles.

At one meeting, Gadde shared a “recent communication” she had sent to CISA director Jen Easterly “about her own involvement in the committee’s work given the fraught time, in advance of the election season.” She wasn’t alone; at the same summit, an unnamed participant similarly “expressed concern for the group’s efforts,” cautioning members “on how to communicate their ongoing work.”

Come June 22, the Committee had prepared a draft report for Easterly, on “protecting critical infrastructure from misinformation and disinformation.” It boldly called for CISA to approach these issues with “the entire information ecosystem in view, including social media platforms of all sizes, mainstream media, cable news, hyper partisan media, talk radio, and other online resources.”

“Where possible,” it added, CISA “should proactively provide informational resources – and assist partners in providing informational resources – to address anticipated threats,” while engaging in both “prebunking and debunking” of unwelcome narratives.

“Proactive work should also include identifying and supporting trusted, authoritative sources in specific communities,” the document advocated.

DHS partners with Israeli private intelligence firm

Clearly, then, the guarantees of DHS officials that the DGB wouldn’t play a role prowling the online sphere for individuals possessed of dangerous “wrongthink” and punishing them accordingly, were outright lies.

At the very least, while the Board itself may not have been designed to eventually exert “operational” powers, its CISA partner absolutely was from day one. That the Committee’s representatives are well-aware of how deeply disturbed the general public would be if their initiative’s true nature was openly advertised, and the urgent need to disguise this as a result, is starkly underlined in records of multiple meetings. Over and over again, for example, the topic of “social listening” – resources that track conversations online in real-time – is discussed.

While manifestly keen to adopt such strategies – which would result in direct state surveillance of citizens’ private and public communications, contrary to firm, repeated DHS assurances the DGB wouldn’t engage in such activities – Committee members felt it best to hold off on making any concrete “recommendations” in this regard. At one point, Gadde even “cautioned the group against pursuing any social listening recommendations” in formal, private discussions with CISA director Jen Easterly, regarding the group’s disinformation battling proposals.

At another meeting, a Committee member – name redacted – “stressed that this is the most sensitive recommendation and could overshadow other recommendations posed by the committee.” It was resolved instead to engage “a broader governing body such as Congress” before going further.

“Sensitive” the use of social listening tools by domestic intelligence agencies may be, but the DHS has access to and recently deployed far more intrusive technology. Earlier this month, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden released an internal DHS Office of Intelligence Analysis report that showed that, in 2020, the Department attempted to concoct a left-wing domestic terror threat, in order to help President Trump.

Following direct orders from the White House, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf set DHS operatives on a quest to amass dossiers on residents of Portland, Oregon attending protests sparked by the police murder of George Floyd. Beyond mere spying, top officials were tasked with linking demonstrators to an imaginary terrorist plot, and fabricating evidence of financial ties between unconnected protesters in police custody.

As it was, the effort failed miserably, although hundreds if not thousands of private citizens were ensnared in the DHS dragnet. This included not just protesters, but their “friends and followers…as well as their interests,” up to and including “First Amendment speech activity.”

These dossiers were compiled using “social media aggregation tool” Tangles, which was created by Cobwebs, a company founded by former Israeli Occupation Force specialists that hawks big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to foreign security and intelligence agencies. Widely used by U.S. law enforcement, its sales manager Johnmichael O’Hare was formerly Commander of the Hartford, Connecticut PD’s Vice, Intelligence, and Narcotics Division.

Evidently, the DHS has the power and capability to spy on – and criminalize – law-abiding citizens to a far greater extent than CISA is willing to overtly admit. As such, it is only reasonable to ask whether the DGB was intended to “socialize” publicly what its parent department has been doing clandestinely for some time.

Committee members were clearly thrilled by how the Board’s launch focused mainstream attention on the subject of “disinformation”, and the grave threat it purportedly poses to national and individual security. A May 10 meeting of the group began with CISA Senior Election Security Lead Kim Wyman hailing how “misinformation and disinformation are elevated to national awareness due to this Board.” The rest of the rendezvous was overwhelmingly concerned with ways to market the Committee accordingly.

It is uncertain the extent to which the blueprints for arm’s length state control of democratic spaces outlined in the June draft document have progressed since its publication, but the infrastructure underpinning that monstrous endeavor is unambiguously well-developed, and could be activated at any time. It may well be operating already, in the shadows.

As such, even if the damning disclosures of Fang and Klippenstein thwart the CISA anti-disinformation effort’s planned public rollout, it seems all but inevitable that it will simply be rebranded yet again, and its true nature better obscured via more effective “socializing” next time round.

....

https://corbettreport.substack.com/p/how-blackrock-conquered-the-world

How BlackRock Conquered The World

Let's play a little game.

Let's imagine you're Joe Q. Normie and you need to run out for some groceries. You hop in the car and head to the store. What store do you go to? Why, Walmart, of course!

And, being an unwitting victim of the sugar conspiracy, what do you buy when you're there? Coke, naturally!

And you can get jabbed at Walmart these days, right? Well then, you might as well make sure you get your sixth Moderna booster while you're there!

And don't forget to fill up with gas on your way home!

Is this creeping you out? Then why don't you shut yourself in your house and never go out shopping again? That'll show 'em! After all, you can always order whatever you need from Amazon, can't you?

Are you noticing a pattern here? Yes, in case you haven't heard, BlackRock, Inc. is now officially everywhere. It owns everything.

Sadly for us, however, the creepy corporate claws of the BlackRock beast aren't content simply to clutch onto a near plurality of the shares of every major corporation in the world. No, BlackRock is now digging its talons in even further and flexing its muscles, putting that inconceivable wealth and influence to use by completely reordering the economy, creating scamdemics and shaping the course of civilization in the process.

Let's face it: if you're not concerned about the power BlackRock wields over the world by this point, then you're not paying attention.

But don't worry if all of this is news to you. Most people have no idea where this investment giant came from, how it clawed its way to the top of the Wall Street dogpile, or what it has planned for your future.

Let's fill that gap in public understanding. Over the course of this investigative series, you're going to get a crash course in the creepiest company you've never heard of.

This week I will give A Brief History of Blackrock and describe how it came to be the economic and political juggernaut it is today.

In Part 2 of this series, we will examine how BlackRock's Going Direct reset paved the way for the massive economic and monetary transition that we have just lived through under the cover of the scamdemic.

And in Part 3, we will examine the Aladdin system and the other creepy ways BlackRock is planning to use its power to mould society in its own interest.

PART 1: A BRIEF HISTORY OF BLACKROCK

"Hold on a second," I hear you interject. "I've got this! BlackRock was founded as a mergers and acquisitions firm in 1985 by a couple of ex-Lehmanites and has since gone on to become the world's largest alternative investment firm, right?"

Wrong. That's Blackstone Inc., currently headed by Stephen Schwarzman. But don't feel bad if you confuse the two. The Blackstone/BlackRock confusion was done on purpose.

In fact, BlackRock began in 1988 as a business proposal by investment banker Larry Fink and a gaggle of business partners. The appropriately named Fink had managed to lose $100 million in a single quarter in 1986 as a manager at First Boston investment bank by betting the wrong way on interest rates. Humbled by this humiliating setback (or so the story goes), Fink turned lemons into lemonade by crafting a vision for an investment firm with an emphasis on risk management. Never again would Larry Fink be caught off guard by a market downturn!

Fink assembled some partners and brought his proposal to Blackstone co-founders Pete Peterson and Stephen Schwarzman, who liked the idea so much that they agreed to extend Fink a $5 million line of credit in exchange for a 50% share in the business. Originally named Blackstone Financial Management, Fink's operation was turning a nice profit within months, had quadrupled the value of its assets in one year, and had grown the value of its portfolio under management to $17 billion by 1992.

Now firmly established as a viable business in its own right, Schwarzman and Fink began musing about spinning the firm off from Blackstone and taking it public. Schwarzman suggested giving the newly independent company a name with "black" in it as a nod to its Blackstone origins and Fink—taking roguish delight in the inevitable confusion and annoyance such a move would cause—proposed the name BlackRock, saying, "You know if we do something like this, all of our people will kill us."

The two evidently share the same sense of humour. "There is a little confusion [between the companies]," Schwarzman now concedes. "And every time that happens I get a real chuckle."

But a shared taste for causing unnecessary confusion was not enough to keep the partners together. By 1994, the two had fallen out over compensation for new hires (or perhaps due to distress over Schwarzman's ongoing divorce, depending who's telling the story), and Schwarzman sold Blackstone's holdings in BlackRock for a mere $240 million. ("That was certainly a heroic mistake," Schwarzman admits.)

Having made the split with Blackstone and established BlackRock as its own entity, Fink was firmly on the path that would lead to his company becoming the globe-bestriding financial colossus that it is today.

In 1999, with its assets under management standing at $165 billion, BlackRock went public on the New York Stock Exchange at $14 per share. Expanding its services into analytics and risk management with its proprietary Aladdin enterprise investment system (more on which in Part 3 of this series), the firm acquired mutual fund company State Street Research & Management in 2004, merged with Merrill Lynch Investment Managers (MLIM) in 2006, and bought Seattle-based Quellos Group's fund-of-hedge-funds business in 2007, bringing the total value of assets under BlackRock management to over $1 trillion.

But it was the Global Financial Crisis of 2007—2008 that catapulted BlackRock to its current position of financial dominance. Just ask Heike Buchter, the German correspondent who literally wrote the book on BlackRock. "Prior to the financial crisis I was not even familiar with the name. But in the years after the Lehman [Brothers] collapse [in 2008], BlackRock appeared everywhere. Everywhere!" Buchter told German news outlet DW in 2015.

Even before the Bear Sterns fiasco materialized into the Lehman Brothers collapse and the full-on financial bloodbath of September 2008, Wall Street was collectively turning to BlackRock for help. AIG, Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac had all hired the firm to comb through their spiraling mess of credit obligations in the months before the meltdown. BlackRock was perceived to be the only firm that could sort through the dizzying math behind the complicated debt swaps and exotic financial instruments underlying the tottering financial system, and many Wall Street kingpins had Fink on speed dial as panic began to grip the markets.

"I think of it like Ghostbusters: When you have a problem, who you gonna call? BlackRock!" UBS managing director Terrence Keely told CNN at the time.

And why wouldn't they trust Fink to pick through the mess of the subprime mortgage meltdown? After all, he was the one who helped launch the whole toxic subprime mortgage industry in the first place.

Oh, did I forget to mention that? Remember the whole "losing his job because he lost $100 million for First Boston in 1986" thing? That came just three years after Fink had made billions for the bank's customers by constructing his first Collateralized Mortgage Obligation (CMO) and almost single-handedly creating the subprime mortgage market that would fail so spectacularly in 2008.

So, depending how you look at it, Fink was either the perfect guy to have in charge of sorting out the mess that his CMO monstrosity had created or the first fink who should have gone to jail for it. Guess which way the US government chose to see it?

Yes, you guessed right. They saw Fink as their saviour, of course.

Specifically, the US government turned to BlackRock for help, with beleaguered US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner personally consulting Larry Fink no less than 49 times over the course of the 18-month crisis. Lest there be any doubt who was calling the shots in that relationship, when Geithner was on the ropes and his position as Secretary of the Treasury was in jeopardy at the end of Obama's first term, Fink's name was on the short list of those who were being considered to replace him.

The Federal Reserve, too, put its faith in BlackRock, turning to the company for assistance in administering the 2008 bailouts. Ultimately, BlackRock ended up playing a role in the $30 billion financing of the sale of Bear Stearns to J.P. Morgan, the $180 billion bailout of AIG, and the $45 billion rescue of Citigroup.

When the dust finally settled on Wall Street after the Lehman Brothers collapse, there was little doubt who was sitting on top of the dust pile: BlackRock. The only question was how BlackRock would parley its growing wealth and financial clout into real-world political power.

For Fink, the answer was obvious: move from the petty crime of high finance into the criminal big leagues of government. Accordingly, throughout the last decade, he has spent his time building up BlackRock's political influence until it has become (as even Bloomberg admits) the de facto "fourth branch of government."

When BlackRock executives managed to get their hands on a confidential Federal Reserve PowerPoint presentation threatening to subject BlackRock to the same regulatory regime as the big banks, the Wall Street behemoth spent millions successfully lobbying the government to drop the proposal.

But lobbying the government is a roundabout way to get what you want. As any good financial guru will tell you, it's far more cost-efficient to make sure that no troublesome regulations are imposed in the first place. Perhaps that's why Fink has been collecting powerful politicians for years now, scooping them up as consultants, advisors and board members so that he can ensure BlackRock has a key agent at the heart of any important political event.

As William Engdahl details in his own exposé of BlackRock:

BlackRock founder and CEO Larry Fink is clearly interested in buying influence globally. He made former German CDU MP Friederich Merz head of BlackRock Germany when it looked as if he might succeed Chancellor Merkel, and former British Chancellor of Exchequer George Osborne as “political consultant.” Fink named former Hillary Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills to the BlackRock board when it seemed certain Hillary would soon be in the White House.

He has named former central bankers to his board and gone on to secure lucrative contracts with their former institutions. Stanley Fisher, former head of the Bank of Israel and also later Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve, is now Senior Adviser at BlackRock. Philipp Hildebrand, former Swiss National Bank president, is vice chairman at BlackRock, where he oversees the BlackRock Investment Institute. Jean Boivin, the former deputy governor of the Bank of Canada, is the global head of research at BlackRock’s investment institute.

And it doesn't end there. When it came time for Biden's handlers to appoint the director of the National Economic Council—responsible for the coordination of policymaking on both domestic and international economic issues—naturally they turned to Brian Deese, the former global head of sustainable investing at BlackRock Inc.

Indeed, by 2019, BlackRock's ascension to the height of political power was complete. At the same time that the World Economic Forum was appointing Fink as a member of its Board of Trustees, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden was making the pilgrimage to Wall Street to beg for BlackRock's support in the fight against Trump. "I'm here to help," Fink reportedly assured Biden.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

. . . or, more accurately, is the present. Because when we peel back the layers of propaganda from the past three years, we find that the remarkable events of the scamdemic have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with a virus. We are instead witnessing a changeover in the monetary and economic system that was conceived, proposed and then implemented by (you guessed it!) BlackRock.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, will be the focus of Part 2 of this exploration. Stay tuned! . . .