Demands to stop the State Department funding of deadly Ukrainian hit-lists that target American citizens, among others, have finally begun in the U.S. Congress. “Federal bureaucrats should not support or partner with foreign groups that attempt to intimidate and silence U.S. citizens and lawmakers,” Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) wrote in a June 11 letter to the chairs of the Appropriations Committee and its Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs. “I am urging the Appropriations Committee majority to support efforts in the Fiscal Year 2025 SFOPS bill to force the State Department and USAID to end all relations with foreign NGOs like TEXTY that seek to silence the speech of Americans they dislike and to sway U.S. policymakers to serve their own interests.” His letter pointed to the notorious Myrotvorets kill list, and the role of the Ukrainian government’s Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD), which “also maintains a list of individuals who also allegedly “promote narratives consistent with Russian propaganda.”
The detonator of this fight was the June 6 release of a new such list by Ukraine’s “Data Journalism Agency,” aka “Texty,” under the title “Roller Coaster: From Trumpists to Communists.” Targeted were 76 U.S. organizations and 388 prominent Americans, including Congressmen, political leaders, media figures, among others, accused of little more than “impeding aid to Ukraine.” Among them were LaRouche Independent U.S. Senate candidate in New York Diane Sare and The LaRouche Organization spokesman Harley Schlanger.
Congressional action is long overdue. EIR has published two dossiers on the multiplying network of U.S. State Department- and USAID-funded Ukrainian agencies, that are openly deployed to draw up hit lists of opponents of NATO’s war on Russia, to be silenced as “Kremlin propagandists” and “information terrorists.” Political leaders such as Sare, Schlanger, Scott Ritter, Col. Richard Black (ret.), and others have written open letters to Congress demanding that it take action, as far back as August 2022.
Representative Banks’ open letter to the House Appropriations Committee led that body to adopt a more limited amendment to the funding bill, to “prevent the targeting of conservative media through the Data Journalism Agency or Global Disinformation Index.”
In addition, Sen. J.D. Vance (OH) and Rep. Matt Gaetz (FL) sent a joint letter to Secretary of State Tony Blinken on June 12, giving him until June 28 to provide answers on Texty’s ties to the State Department. Their letter specifies that “this is not the first time a U.S.-sponsored Ukrainian outfit has engaged in a hit piece targeting the U.S. media market,” naming the Center for Countering Disinformation of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council and its July 2022 “list of individuals, including American citizens and among those, including current and former members of Congress, as supporting `Russian narratives,’” while still receiving U.S. funding.
“All Americans can agree that our tax dollars should not be supporting direct attacks on U.S. persons based upon reasonable political disagreement, and especially not direct attacks on U.S. legislators based solely upon their vote,” they wrote.
Elon Musk, also on Texty’s list, endorsed Congressional action to defund Texty as “a good first step” in a reply on his X platform, which should be followed by adding them “to the list of sanctioned terrorist organizations.”
