US Intelligence officials accused highly popular financial blog Zero Hedge of spreading Russian propaganda.
Zero Hedge has been under attack over the years for daring to publish articles that go against the fake news media’s narrative.
Now the CIA is accusing Zero Hedge of spreading Kremlin propaganda for publishing articles written by people connected to the Strategic Culture Foundation, a foundation sanctioned by Joe Biden for interfering in the 2020 election.
To no one’s surprise, the Associated Press is acting as the CIA’s running dogs.
“They are one of our hundreds of contributors — unlike Mainstream Media, we try to publish a wide spectrum of views that cover both sides of a given story,” Zero Hedge told AP in an email.
The Associated Press also noted that Zero Hedge “has been sharply critical of Biden and posted stories about allegations of wrongdoing by his son Hunter.”
So that’s what this latest attack is all about.
Any journalist who criticizes Joe Biden and goes against the ‘official’ narrative is spreading Russian propaganda.
The Associated Press reported:
U.S. intelligence officials on Tuesday accused a conservative financial news website with a significant American readership of amplifying Kremlin propaganda and alleged five media outlets targeting Ukrainians have taken direction from Russian spies.
The officials said Zero Hedge, which has 1.2 million Twitter followers, published articles created by Moscow-controlled media that were then shared by outlets and people unaware of their nexus to Russian intelligence. The officials did not say whether they thought Zero Hedge knew of any links to spy agencies and did not allege direct links between the website and Russia.
Zero Hedge denied the claims and said it tries to “publish a wide spectrum of views that cover both sides of a given story.”
The officials briefed The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence sources. It was the latest effort by President Joe Biden’s administration to release U.S. intelligence findings about Russian activity involving Ukraine as part of a concerted push to expose and influence the moves of Russian President Vladimir Putin. U.S. officials previously accused Putin of planning a “false-flag” operation to create a pretext for a new invasion of Ukraine and detailed what they believe are final-stage Russian preparations for an assault.
Zero Hedge responded in a blog post Tuesday morning:
Well, now we’ve done it – we’ve angered the CIA, and for what? For publishing views that challenge the conventional narrative, such as disputing that an invasion of Ukraine is actually “imminent” as the US State Department and its mainstream media conduits repeat day after day, or that the Covid virus was actually created in a Chinese lab, a view which has gained substantial prominence in recent months after it emerged that none other than the UK’s Jeremy Farrar (also known as the UK’s Doctor Fauci) played a pivotal role in stifling suggestions that this new virus might have come from a laboratory rather than emerged through natural zoonotic transmission from animals.
Of course, there is no actual accusation that Zero Hedge works directly with anyone tied to Russia or its intelligence apparatus – as the AP admits “officials did not say whether they thought Zero Hedge knew of any links to spy agencies and did not allege direct links between the website and Russia”, which is correct because – and we will repeat this once again for the record and for all future similar hit piece attempts to smear us – this website has never worked, collaborated or cooperated with Russia, nor are there any links to spy (or any other) agencies; instead all the AP notes, citing some unnamed “intelligence official”, is that the US intelligence apparatus is unhappy that among our hundreds of guest publishing contributors is a website called Strategic Culture Foundation which US intel officials “allege” take direction from the SVR, the Russian foreign intelligence service.
Well, is the Strategic Culture Foundation – which periodically guest posts on this website along with hundreds of other sources of alternative information – taking direction from Russian intel?
Perhaps. We don’t know. What we do know is that Alastair Crooke, one of the most prolific writers on SCF website is a former high ranking MI6 figure and UK diplomat, i.e., a former British spook. Perhaps he is now a double agent working for Putin after spending decades spying for the UK?
We don’t know, and we don’t care: instead what we have cared about since our first day, is to provide a platform, a voice to anyone who has a unique, a different, perspective from the one pushed by the mainstream media. The same mainstream media which we and everyone else now knows for a fact takes direction from both the US intelligence service in particular (see here, here and here) and the US government in general, or the “deep state” as some call it.
Read Zero Hedge’s full response by clicking here.
Zero Hedge also hit back at the Associated Press for cooperating with the Nazis: