Republican
presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump hosts a
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2024. REUTERS/Alyssa Pointer/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
Exclusive: Trump launched CIA covert influence operation against China
WASHINGTON,
March 14 - Two years into office, President Donald Trump authorized the
Central Intelligence Agency to launch a clandestine campaign on Chinese
social media aimed at turning public opinion in China against its
government, according to former U.S. officials with direct knowledge of
the highly classified operation.
Three
former officials told Reuters that the CIA created a small team of
operatives who used bogus internet identities to spread negative
narratives about Xi Jinping’s government while leaking disparaging
intelligence to overseas news outlets. The effort, which began in 2019,
has not been previously reported.
During
the past decade, China has rapidly expanded its global footprint,
forging military pacts, trade deals, and business partnerships with
developing nations.
The
CIA team promoted allegations that members of the ruling Communist
Party were hiding ill-gotten money overseas and slammed as corrupt and
wasteful China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which provides financing for
infrastructure projects in the developing world, the sources told
Reuters.
Although
the U.S. officials declined to provide specific details of these
operations, they said the disparaging narratives were based in fact
despite being secretly released by intelligence operatives under false
cover. The efforts within China were intended to foment paranoia among
top leaders there, forcing its government to expend resources chasing
intrusions into Beijing’s tightly controlled internet, two former
officials said. “We wanted them chasing ghosts,” one of these former
officials said.
Chelsea Robinson, a CIA spokesperson, declined to comment on the existence of the influence program, its goals or impacts.
A
spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said news of the
CIA initiative shows the U.S. government uses the “public opinion space
and media platforms as weapons to spread false information and
manipulate international public opinion.”
The
CIA operation came in response to years of aggressive covert efforts by
China aimed at increasing its global influence, the sources said.
During his presidency, Trump pushed a tougher response to China than had
his predecessors. The CIA’s campaign signaled a return to methods that
marked Washington’s struggle with the former Soviet Union. “The Cold War
is back,” said Tim Weiner, author of a book on the history of political
warfare.
Reuters
was unable to determine the impact of the secret operations or whether
the administration of President Joe Biden has maintained the CIA
program. Kate Waters, a spokesperson for the Biden administration’s
National Security Council, declined to comment on the program’s
existence or whether it remains active. Two intelligence historians told
Reuters that when the White House grants the CIA covert action
authority, through an order known as a presidential finding, it often
remains in place across administrations.
Trump,
now the Republican frontrunner for president, has suggested he will
take an even tougher approach toward China if re-elected president in
November. Spokespeople for Trump and his former national security
advisers, John Bolton and Robert O’Brien, who both served the year the
covert action order was signed, declined to comment.
The
operation against Beijing came with significant risk of escalating
tensions with the United States, given the power of China's economy and
its ability to retaliate through trade, said Paul Heer, a former senior
CIA analyst on East Asia who learned of the presidential authorization
from Reuters. For example, after Australia called for an investigation
inside China probing the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020,
Beijing blocked billions of dollars in Australian trade through
agricultural tariffs.
Trump’s
2019 order came after years of warnings from the U.S. intelligence
community, and media reports, about how China was using bribery and
threats to obtain support from developing countries in geopolitical
disputes as it attempted to sow division in the United States through
front groups.
China’s
Foreign Ministry said Beijing follows a “principle of non-interference
in the internal affairs of other countries and does not interfere in the
domestic affairs of the United States.”
A
year earlier, Trump gave the CIA greater powers to launch offensive
cyber operations against U.S. adversaries after numerous Russian and
Chinese cyber attacks against American organizations, Yahoo News reported
Sources
described the 2019 authorization uncovered by Reuters as a more
ambitious operation. It enabled the CIA to take action not only in China
but also in countries around the world where the United States and
China are competing for influence. Four former officials said the
operation targeted public opinion in Southeast Asia, Africa and the
South Pacific.
“The
feeling was China was coming at us with steel baseball bats and we were
fighting back with wooden ones,” said a former national security
official with direct knowledge of the finding.
Matt
Pottinger, a senior National Security Council official at the time,
crafted the authorization, three former officials said. It cited
Beijing’s alleged use of malign influence, allegations of intellectual
property theft and military expansion as threats to U.S. national
security, one of those former officials said.
Pottinger
told Reuters he would not comment on the “accuracy or inaccuracy of
allegations about U.S. intelligence activities,” adding that “it would
be incorrect to assume that I would have had knowledge of specific U.S.
intelligence operations.”
Covert
messaging allows the United States to implant ideas in countries where
censorship might prevent that information from coming to light, or in
areas where audiences wouldn’t give much credence to U.S. government
statements, said Loch Johnson, a University of Georgia political
scientist who studies the use of such tactics.
Covert
propaganda campaigns were common during the Cold War, when the CIA
planted 80 to 90 articles a day in an effort to undermine the Soviet
Union, Johnson said. In the 1950s, for example, the CIA created an
astrological magazine in East Germany to publish foreboding predictions
about communist leaders, according to declassified records.
The
covert propaganda campaign against Beijing could backfire, said Heer,
the former CIA analyst. China could use evidence of a CIA influence
program to bolster its decades-old accusations of shadowy Western
subversion, helping Beijing “proselytize” in a developing world already
deeply suspicious of Washington.
The
message would be: “‘Look at the United States intervening in the
internal affairs of other countries and rejecting the principles of
peaceful coexistence,’” Heer said. “And there are places in the world
where that is going to be a resonant message.”
U.S.
influence operations also risk endangering dissidents, opposition
groups critical of China and independent journalists, who could be
falsely painted as CIA assets, said Thomas Rid, a professor at Johns
Hopkins University who wrote a book on the history of political warfare.
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Schectman and Bing reported from Washington. Additional reporting by Liz Lee in Beijing. Editing by Don Durfee and Blake Morrison.