(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The FBI pushed Meta to take down an official U.S. State Department Instagram account, according to a new report from the House Weaponization Subcommittee.
The report revealed that the FBI was acting on behalf of the Security Service of Ukraine, the SBU—the country’s main intelligence agency. As Headline USA has previously reported, the FBI has been helping the SBU censor pro-Russia social-media accounts.
However, somehow an official U.S. State Department account was included on an SBU-created list relayed by the FBI to Meta.
On March 2, FBI Special Agent Aleksandr Kobzanets emailed to Meta with the subject line “additional accounts received from the SBU – believed to be involved in disinformation,” according to the House Weaponization report.
“In the attachment to that e-mail, the SBU accused the provided list of Instagram accounts of ‘distribut[ing] content that promotes war, inaccurately reflects events in Ukraine, justifies Russian war crimes in Ukraine in violation of international law,’ among other things,’” said the report.
“Incredibly, on this list was the account @usaporusski, which is the official, verified, Russian-language account of the U.S. State Department,” it continued. “Neither the FBI nor the SBU provides an explanation as to how the U.S. State Department account was ‘involved in disinformation.’”
The Weaponization Committee suggested that Russia may have infiltrated the SBU and tricked the FBI into trying to censor the State Department. Much of the committee’s report is devoted to tracking the history of Russia infiltrating the Ukrainian government.
Citing mainstream media reports, the Weaponization Committee said that much of the SBU–FBI censorship collaboration occurred before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy purged the government of hundreds of officials accused of treason.
The committee blasted the FBI for doing the bidding of an allegedly Russian-compromised intelligence agency.
“Put simply, the FBI worked with and on behalf of a foreign intelligence agency—widely known to be compromised by Moscow at the time—and directly abetted efforts to censor Americans engaging in protected speech,” the report states. “As a result, the FBI agents’ actions had the potential to render substantial aid to the Kremlin’s war effort.”
Meta apparently caught the FBI’s blunder and did not censor the State Department account, which was active as of the publication of this article.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
