State Department threatens to OBSTRUCT House committee’s censorship investigation

02/23/2024 / By Ramon Tomey

The Department of State (DOS) has threatened Congress that it will only show a congressional committee its records “in camera supervision” until it gets a “better understanding of how [lawmakers] will utilize this sensitive information.”

The DOS issued this threat in a Feb. 14 letter to Rep. Roger Williams (R-TX), chairman of the House Committee on Small Business (SBC). The letter, signed by DOS Assistant Secretary of State for Legal Affairs Naz Durakoglu, expressed “deep concern regarding certain information … publicly released by the [SBC] without prior consultation” with the State Department.

Durakoglu referenced a June 2023 letter the SBC sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken about the Global Engagement Center (GEC), an office under the DOS. The State Department provided documents in December of the same year in response to the letter.

However, the aforementioned papers were marked “sensitive but unclassified” and “produced to [CSB], not for public release.” According to her, the State Department “had determined that public release of this information could jeopardize the GEC’s programs and/or cause harm to the [DOS’] implementing partners.”

The State Department official cited a Jan. 9, 2024 report by the Washington Examiner about the SBC’s probe of the GEC. It reportedly linked the same documents provided to the committee, complete with the “sensitive” and “not for public release” markings. Durakoglu accused William’s committee of making no effort to consult with the DOS “to protect or even ascertain any particular sensitivities before making the information public.”

“The [State] Department continues to respond to the [SBC’s] requests and remains committed to accommodating [its] need for information regarding the GEC. However, without better understanding how the committee will utilize this sensitive information – in the future, the [DOS] may be forced to only provide the [SBC] with sensitive information that is not suitable for public release in an in camera setting.”

State Department incensed by Congress’ request for transparency

A year prior, the Examiner‘s Gabe Kaminsky exposed how the GEC was backing the U.K.-based Global Disinformation Index (GDI), which proudly boasts of the Dynamic Exclusion List. The GDI’s blacklist contains at least 2,000 websites deemed unsuitable for advertising. The Examiner was among those blacklisted as among the “risky” sites alongside several conservative sites, while the now-defunct left-wing BuzzFeed was deemed among the outlets with the “lowest level of disinfo.” (Related: BOMBSHELL REVELATION: State Department’s GEC, Soros’s open society, the EU, and UK are funding the “disinformation index”: A pseudo-nonprofit that “blacklists” Conservative news from online advertisers.)

The GEC, which used American tax dollars to bankroll the GDI, replaced the earlier Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications created during the Obama administration in 2011. Its mission is to reportedly “counter” any messaging, foreign or domestic, deemed as “undermining or influencing the policies, security or stability of the United States.”

The SBC then wrote to the State Department in June 2023, but only received documents in December 2023. Even then, the list provided was partial – with “dozens” of GEC contractors missing despite Congress asking for an “unredacted list of all GEC grant recipients and associated award numbers” from 2019 through the current year.

Kaminsky later wrote the Jan. 9 report that blasted the GEC for sending “incomplete” records. He also linked to a “snippet” of the GEC’s contractor list that showed multiple redactions. This reportedly prompted Durakoglu to write her Feb. 14 letter to the SBC.

Writing for Racket News, independent journalist Matt Taibbi pointed out that the information requested by Williams’ committee “is not classified – making the delays and tantrums more ridiculous.”

“There are simply too many agencies that have adopted the attitude that the entire federal government is one giant intelligence service, entitled to secret budgeting and an oversight-free existence. They need pushback on this score, and have at last started to get it,” he wrote.

“Perhaps it’s time for the State Department to receive a similar wake-up call. If GEC wants to put conditions on disclosure, can we put conditions on paying taxes?”

Watch this clip of Glenn Beck and Gabe Kaminsky discussing Beck’s inclusion in the GDI blacklist, which is funded by the State Department’s GEC.

This video is from the High Hopes channel on Brighteon.com.