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Moscow's latest KGB-style disinfo campaign, Reagan’s classified diary, Bill Casey’s legacy, CIA diplomats and a new NSA chief's moves against election interference

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KGB Disinformation 2.0: Russia has launched a disinformation campaign in Africa that is straight out of the 1980s KGB Cold War playbook. The Wall Street Journal broke the story about a Russian media campaign (dis)informing Africans that they were unwitting test subjects of a Pentagon biological research program. The campaign reportedly centers on “African Initiative,” an online news service that U.S. officials say receives material support and guidance from Russian intelligence services. SpyWeek found one example on African Initiative’s English-language Telegram channel. In a report on the U.S. Army’s Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases’ (AMRID) activities, African Initiative wrote, “According to Russian experts, under the guise of research and humanitarian projects, the African continent is becoming a testing ground for the Pentagon.” It’s not only a lie, it’s a 40-year-old lie.

Moscow’s up to its old tricks in Africa (African Center for Strategic Studies)

The KGB’s “Active Measures” division in 1983 created an AIDS disinformation operation that falsely claimed that the auto-immune disease had been created in the AMRID lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the Kremlin floated evidence-free conspiracies about U.S. bioweapons labs in Ukraine. (That line was picked up by then Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who, perhaps not coincidentally, scored an exclusive interview this week with Russian President Vladimir Putin.) Russia’s new disinformation campaign in Africa is only getting started, the Journal reported, and Washington wants to disrupt its plans by exposing them before they gain traction. African Initiative “has plans to spread disinformation in coming months in the hope that it will be seen as the product of independent reporting and not the result of a Moscow-directed informational campaign,” the Journal reported.

Casey At Bat: A newly declassified chapter of an internal 2017 CIA history of Director William J. Casey’s performance makes the case that his impact on history has been overlooked.