By Philip Giraldi

Russian President Vladimir Putin has certainly been a naughty boy! The always unreliable and unofficial government-originating disinformation source The Hill is reporting that Moscow has spent the equivalent of $300,000,000 in an effort to “influence” world politics in its favor.

The story relies on and follows a New York Times special report which again seeks to revive the claim that the Kremlin has been interfering effectively in American elections. Is it a coincidence that all the Russian bashing is surfacing right now before the US elections at a time when the President Joe Biden Administration is agonizing over what it describes as sometimes “foreign-supported” domestic extremists? I don’t think so.

The Hill report establishes the framework, claiming that “Russia has provided at least $300 million to political parties and political leaders since 2014 in a covert attempt to influence foreign politics, the US State Department alleges.



Multiple news outlets reported that a cable released by the State Department reveals that Russia has likely spent at least hundreds of millions more on parties and officials who are sympathetic to Russia… According to the Associated Press… Russia used front organizations to send money to preferred causes or politicians.

The organizations include think tanks in Europe and state-owned entities in Central America, Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a press briefing on Tuesday that Russia’s election meddling is an ‘assault on sovereignty… It is an effort to chip away at the ability of people around the world to choose the government that they see best fit to represent them, to represent their interests, to represent their values.’”

And why is Russia behaving as it allegedly does? According to another State Department source who spoke to The Hill the Joe Biden Administration’s concern is not regarding any single country but the entire world as “we continue to face challenges against democratic societies.” Oddly enough, that Russia should be disinclined to waste its money and other resources on such a quixotic objective never appears to have occurred to the Department of State or to the editors at The Hill.

Typically, the State Department has shared information with select media but has refused to publicly release any parts of the cable which allegedly provide intelligence-based evidence supporting the claims of Russian meddling. The Hill, perhaps inadvertently, reveals what the whole story really is about when it concludes its piece with “Intelligence assessments have determined that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election in spreading disinformation online that was designed to help then-candidate Donald Trump over his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Russia also tried to help Trump in his reelection battle against President Biden in 2020.” So yes, it’s all about Moscow helping Trump against the Democratic candidates. Interestingly, however, most non-Democratic Party-aligned sources have come to agree that it was the Democrats who were trying to damage Trump in 2016 through the use of a fabricated dossier that sought to impugn his character and portray him as a Russian stooge. Far worse, they also used the national security apparatus to “get Trump.”

The Times adds more detail and serves inter alia as a puff piece for the Biden Administration’s foreign policy vis-à-vis Russia. It is based clearly on information provided by unnamed government sources and is largely devoid of any actual evidence, though it does cite some names of Russians to provide authenticity. This is a common trick used in the media and government, particularly by intelligence agencies, to make fabricated material look genuine.

One giveaway that the reporting should be considered suspect occurs in the very first paragraph where it states that “Russia has covertly given at least $300 million to political parties, officials and politicians in more than two dozen countries since 2014, and plans to transfer hundreds of millions more, with the goal of exerting political influence and swaying elections.” If the New York Times is privy to Russian top-level planning, even via leaked information from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other government sources, it would be surprising to learn that the US has that capability.

If the National Security Agency (NSA) has secretly broken Russian secure communications to obtain such information, it would be a major security breach and a violation of the Espionage Act of 1918 for any American news outlet to suggest that, indicating pari passu that the report is bogus.

And then there is the question of context. The United States has been routinely doing what is now being blamed on Russia ever since the conclusion of the Second World War. And it does it on a scale much larger than a paltry $300 million. The effort to bring about regime change in Ukraine alone cost something like $5 billion. Meddling in foreign elections and politics is, in fact, a major function of the CIA.

It is called “covert action” or referred to in the trade as “CA.” Covert action is defined in the National Security Act of 1947 as “[a]n activity or activities of the United States Government to influence political, economic or military conditions abroad, where it is intended that the role of the United States Government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly. 50 U.S.C. § 3093(e).”

Most CIA Stations and even the larger Bases overseas have covert action capabilities and their activity is frequently governed by the operating directives that are applied to every country where the Agency operates. In practice, covert action most often consists of recruiting, paying and directing journalists and other opinion shapers to write stories and support narratives favorable to US interests. In some cases, depending on circumstances, the CA officers will either directly or indirectly fund groups and individuals who are opponents of the established government. If there is a major operation, like Ukraine, success comes when there is regime change.

And what is the value for money with CA operations? It is hard to say but the official intelligence budget for the US government is $84.1 billion with additional sums hidden in other government funding, including the Pentagon and Homeland Security. The CIA gets a large chunk of that, and, as covert operations are costly, much of the money goes in support of those activities. So, we are talking about the US spending multiple billions of dollars in support of “actions” analogous to those that Putin is being accused of carrying out over the course of a decade in more than two dozen countries worldwide with $300 million! Good luck Vlad!

I might reasonably conclude by observing that the United States government’s effort to hoodwink the American public into believing a lot of nonsense about what is going on in the world might itself be described as covert action. And it is particularly interesting in that it is self-funded by the US taxpayer. Never before in history has a free or at least somewhat free people funded its own destruction, but there is always a first for everything.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax-deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. The website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, the address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

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13 COMMENTS

  3. first question.
    In previous article I read that Trump in 2019 tore up the NFST treaty with Russia and that in 2017 he threatened North Korea for bomb testing. True, but it is also true that in 2019 he was the first and only U.S. President to be received by Kim Jong Un (see, in summary, https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1145266508110675971?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw).
    Now, again as it is written, President Biden could follow in JFK’s footsteps by offering to remove anti-ballistic missiles from Poland and Romania? Or to meet with Putin as Trump met with Kim…?
    Second question, which ties in with the first question
    Here I read, again from similar sources, Russia also tried to help Trump in his reelection battle against President Biden in 2020. But then why is Putin after the shredding of the NFST treaty still funding Trump?
    Perhaps that Trump and Putin are “stupid”: one reneges on a treaty and the other rewards him with $300,000 in campaign financing and then goes on to cancel other treaties?
    Of course not, they are not “stupid, ” but at election time can’t we see that everything is like a poisoned stone for two pigeons, Trump and Putin, who are both enemies of Biden and his “Holy War”?
    That is why I agree with Philip Giraldi.

    Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

    • Trump and Putin are part of an alliance. Of course anyone who mentions that will be immediately attacked by Mike Rothschild and his shills as being part of a “Qanon Conspiracy”. Just as anyone who suggests that the “elite” for the most part are a bunch of Satanic bunch of blood sucking pedophiles. Anyway if you read the following you should have a better understanding of this https://thedocuments.info/Payload/Part%20Two_%20What's%20REALLY%20happening%20in%20Ukraine%20by%20Derek%20Johnson..pdf

    • That is, if VT and J.E.A will allow me to reply, and without “moderation,” because I do not write fibs.
      What I wrote on Oct. 16 is logic: the black beast of hypocrites.
      I don’t need Oct. 18 advice from those who first insult and then believe the fable of Leonardo and Wuhan like your friend Fabio. And if you insist I’ll put where you did the one and the other.
      I remind you as well that in the world plague that came to Florence in 1348 a certain Giovanni Boccaccio, (who with Petrarch and Dante) sons of our mother Earth, is known throughout the acculturated world for his “Decameron” “either they shall not be vanquished by death or it shall kill them gladly” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXd0oNADXwE ). This was to influence Chaucer and his “Canterbury Tales” and then even Cervantes’ “Don Quixote.”
      Ergo, stay tuned.

  4. Phil it should be the Shill🤣 Not the Hill. The pot is really calling out the kettle here. They must of pulled that 800m figure out of their ass since it was determined that Russia spent a paltry 100gs on the election in 2016 yet according to the “IC” was somehow able to wreck Hillary’s 1.3b campaign🤣 So far there’s been no evidence that Russia spent any money on the last presidential election. They did however have access to the Dominion servers though along with several other countries according to the report filed by the DNI in compliance with EO 13848. Something that wasn’t reported by the MSM because they wanted to give the illusion that it was the “most secure election in American history” 🤣 Most of the shenanigans were carried out by CIA from a safe house in Frankfurt using Scorecard and when they realized that Trump would win even with a rigged vote they called on the Leonardo Sat Con to stop the count.

  6. The US State Department believes that Russia spent millions of dollars to prevent the NAZI and PEDOPHILE Biden from coming to power!? Oh-oh-oh….There are no words!!! The State Department is vigilantly defending the American Homeland of pedophile Democrats!?Oh-oh-oh…There are no words!!! And what, Americans, pedophilia is a profitable business!? Oh-oh-oh…There are no words!!! Russia tried to interfere in the US elections in order to prevent America from being ruled….teleprompter!??? Oh-oh-oh…There are no words….

  7. I truly doubt that. No matter how much they spent in just Amerika wouldn’t over come the neo-conns and their friends the merchants of death. How sad for us on Main Street Amerika

  8. Is that not what all governments are doing?? Hillary Clinton stated as much. And who still has the illusion it is not all one big Mindprogramm, called Public Relations, playing the people,which in no way get the government, politicians they voted for. Here in the Netherlands the missions in Afghanistan against the will of the people. The EU constitution a big No, became the treaty of Lisboa. Cooperation with Ukraine a big NO, PM Rutte went ahead anyway. Etc. Etc. Most clear was how most polliticans were all in favour of the Covid vacx without any knowledge about what was in those or what their true goal was. We are now suffering an excess in deaths, including babies and teenagers. Weird clots found in corpses by undertakers. Meanwhile Biden came out they are to support Transhumanism. Those in power laugh their heads off. We can do nothing to protest them, only try to analyze their actions after the fact.

    • Voting on Election Day gives all of these politicians legitimacy. I would that all US citizens would just sit at home on Election Day and that would be our vote.

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