A brief mention in an FBI statement highlights the stark reality of the Chinese Communist Party’s influence in the United States.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has ways of implanting false information into U.S. discourse to the point that it becomes mainstream, the FBI has recently reported.
The FBI refers to this phenomenon as “information laundering.”
It mainly refers to spreading false information online to the point at which “it’s then adopted by more mainstream sites in an attempt to legitimize it,” a spokesperson from the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office told The Epoch Times.
“This is a generalized description of what we’ve seen at the FBI,” the spokesperson said.
Information laundering is a textbook component of disinformation, the term used by the communist regime in Soviet Russia, according to Ronald Rychlak, a law professor at the University of Mississippi and expert on Soviet disinformation.
“A key component of disinformation is it has to come from a reliable source,” he told The Epoch Times. “It’s not legitimate if it comes from the Chinese communist government. It was not legitimate if it came from the Soviet newspaper during the height of the Soviet Union.
“It has to be placed in a news outlet, with a source, with a person who people accept as being legitimate.”
A real disinformation operation requires a gradual process, he said.
“You can’t just go to The New York Times, The Washington Post, or The Epoch Times or whatever, and say: ‘Here’s a story. Publish it.’ You have to have it come from multiple sources,” he said.
The Soviets often introduced false information through industry newsletters, local magazines, and newspapers in the United States that were always hungry for content.
“You get this going to six or seven different news outlets. Pretty soon, a reliable source or a reliable person reads it in three different places and repeats it,” Rychlak said.
“Those first stories would not rise to the level of what the Soviet intelligence bureau would consider disinformation because they weren’t really trustworthy or reliable. They were laying the groundwork to get to the level where people would accept it to be reliable.”
Another step is to gradually influence reporters at major news media outlets to predispose them to pick up the false narrative.
“The reporter may very well think that he or she is just being a good reporter, investigating leads, looking into things, not being aware that someone is laying breadcrumbs down, trying to lead you in a particular direction,” Rychlak said.
“They don’t want the American reporter, the Western reporter, to cooperate with them. They want them to believe in their heart that they are being a good journalist doing the right thing and reporting accurately.
By Petr Svab
