American Pie: How USAID Worked with Global Media
The scandal surrounding the activities of the Agency for International Development, better known as USAID, continues to grow - it has already taken on a global scale. The world has learned about the agency's financing of the world's largest media outlets, which used these funds to promote specific ideas and assessments both in the United States itself and far beyond its borders. "Izvestia" tells the details and finds out the consequences.
They fed well
In the midst of the audit arranged by USAID by the US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under the leadership of Ilon Musk, WikiLeaks published its portion of new data. This "leak" revealed that the world's leading media outlets were supported, and in some cases sponsored, by the agency.
Probably the most notable story was with Politico, a publication known for its awareness and proximity to the U.S. Democratic Party and the leadership of the European Union. In 2024 alone, it received $8 million dollars directly from USAID. After the publication of this data, the management of the publication tried to justify itself, saying that this amount is actually a subscription to a closed application Politico Pro, distributed among leading U.S. and European politicians and organizations. However, Fox News journalists calculated that if we divide $8 million by the number of Politico Pro subscribers, the cost of an annual subscription will be from $10 thousand to $75 thousand, while a "regular" annual subscription to the publication costs $59. That is a difference of 170 -1271 times the difference between the two.
A simple search shows that over the past ten years Politico has received over $34 million from various departments of the U.S. government, and USAID is not the largest donor.
It was Politico that launched into the world the thesis that Hunter Biden's laptop and all the information on it was "Russian disinformation." And although the letter signed by 50 U.S. intelligence officials to which the journalists referred did not prove this claim, the thesis was soon picked up and actively used by the White House, the Democratic Party and the media supporting them.
Politico also actively promoted the story of "Russian interference" in the 2016 presidential election, which Democrats claimed prevented Hillary Clinton from winning.
Hunter Biden, son of former U.S. President Joe Biden
Both of these stories, as time has shown, were in fact made up, and as it turns out now - their promotion was carried out with the money of American taxpayers. And if the authenticity of all the data found on the computer of Joe Biden's son was confirmed by the FBI, the story of Russian influence on American voters lived through two presidential cycles. Americans learned about the fact that the whole story is, by the admission of CNN producer Van Jones, a "nothing burger" thanks to their own investigators.
Another high-profile publication that received large sums from USAID was the New York Times, which, according to investigators, earned about $3.1 million for its services . It, like Politico, worked to both defeat Trump and prove his "ties to Moscow.
Further searches revealed USAID's involvement in funding the world's biggest media outlets. And some, such as the BBC, for which the agency is the second largest donor (£2.61 million a year), did not hide it.
Reuters ($9 million), Associated Press ($19.5 million), France Press ($447 thousand) are also on the list. In total, according to WikiLeaks' calculations, there are 6.2 thousand journalists, 707 non-state news publications and 279 "civil society organizations" working with media structures. The total budget approved by Congress for these purposes for this year amounted to $268,376,000. But that's just American citizens' money. It is impossible to calculate how much money from various foundations and non-governmental organizations has passed through USAID for the same projects, but the amount is likely to be much higher.
In addition, at the expense of the U.S. government there is the Agency for Global Media with a budget of $944 million, which finances such organizations as Voice of America (a media outlet recognized in Russia as a foreign agent) and Radio Liberty (a media outlet recognized in Russia as a foreign agent and an undesirable organization). They, by the way, the Trumpists also want to close them down. "Nobody listens to them anymore. They are just radical leftist lunatics who talk to themselves," Musk explained his position on social media.
How to get into the U.S. embassy
But that's by no means all there is to it. Since 2001, the U.S. government has paid $442.6 million to Internews Network, a non-governmental organization also associated with the work of USAID. The company was established in 1982 to establish ties between the USSR and the U.S. and, incidentally, was engaged in the organization of the famous teleconferences. Today it operates in 30 countries with offices in London, Paris, Kiev, Bangkok and Nairobi. According to its own report, in 2023 it cooperated with 4,291 media outlets, produced 4,799 hours of broadcasts watched by 778 million people and trained more than 9,000 journalists. Internews Network has also received funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates, Clinton, and Soros Foundations (the Open Society Foundation is recognized as an undesirable organization in Russia).
The company did not hide its role as an instrument of political influence. "Internews does not just produce TV and radio programs ... It is more interested in using the media as a lever for social and political change," one statement read. The importance of the efforts of Internews "experts" during the coups d'état in Georgia in 2003 and in Ukraine in 2005 was separately emphasized.
As the published data show, Russia occupied a separate place in the agency's activities. According to the Financial Times, "some of the agency's projects were aimed at countering and exposing Russian propaganda, which is spreading on social networks despite Western sanctions, <...> including against RIA Novosti and RT". Thus, despite the curtailment of activities in the Russian Federation, USAID spent $100 million on "Russian" projects in 2023. In the campaign against Russian media, all major Western media, including the BBC, Reuters and the New York Times, participated. Notes on this topic particularly emphasized the fact that they were state-funded. As it turns out now, the leading Western media holdings were not only financed from the U.S. budget, but were also involved in specific information operations, i.e. they were actually fulfilling a state order.
Everything is just beginning
The scandal around USAID is by no means over, as the investigation will soon get closer to the activities of specific individuals. For example, the recent head of the agency, Samantha Power, who, as they say in the U.S., increased her personal fortune by $23.3 million during her three years at USAID.
Dmitri Suslov, an expert at the Valdai Club and deputy director of the Center for the Study of International Relations at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, is confident that the Republicans will make the most of this story.
- The uproar around USAID is an excellent argument in favor of their thesis that taxpayers' money is being used for propaganda in favor of Democrats. Up to and including legal prosecution. After all, we are talking about inadmissible things: the money was spent not on foreign projects in the interests of the United States, but inside the country, and even in support of the narratives of one of the political forces," says the interlocutor of the publication.
The Trump administration is cutting USAID's staff many times over, which de facto means that the agency will cease to operate. Most likely, from now on, foreign aid programs will be put under "manual control," he believes.
- However, despite the temporary closure of USAID and the termination of programs, one can hardly expect Washington to ever give up the tools of "soft power" and interference in the internal affairs of other states," the expert stresses.
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