Anonymous "US intelligence officials" have launched a smear campaign accusing ZeroHedge of "amplifying Kremlin propaganda."
U.S. intelligence officials allege a conservative financial website with a significant U.S. readership is amplifying Kremlin propaganda. Officials said Zero Hedge, with 1.2 million Twitter followers, published articles created by Moscow-controlled media. https://t.co/VjmLib794m
— The Associated Press (@AP) February 15, 2022
The Associated Press laundered the smears in an article titled, "US accuses financial website of spreading Russian propaganda":
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." In a response posted online Tuesday morning, the website said it "has never worked, collaborated or cooperated with Russia, nor are there any links to spy agencies."
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.
The "evidence" is that they published a few articles from the Strategic Culture Foundation, which publishes the works of well-respected journalists and commentators such as Pepe Escobar and ex-CIA agent Philip Giraldi.
There is no reason for these "U.S. intelligence officials" to be anonymous. It doesn't take "sensitive intelligence sources" to read ZeroHedge's public website and click the links to the articles they publish from outside sources.
The only reason to put forward these smears is to get ZeroHedge censored on social media or censored directly through more aggressive measures.
Just last year, corrupt Attorney General Merrick Garland seized the domain names of Press TV and 32 other MidEast news sites after Israel decidedly lost the propaganda war in their bombing campaign on Gaza.
Garland justified the lawless seizure of their domain names by accusing the allegedly Iranian-linked media outlets of having "targeted the United States with disinformation campaigns and malign influence operations."
They're now accusing ZeroHedge of similar crap, merely swapping Russia for Iran.
ZeroHedge has exploded in popularity over the past few years despite being banned from Facebook and blacklisted/deranked by Google.
According to SimilarWeb, ZeroHedge is the 53rd biggest news site in the US with nearly 80% of their traffic coming from people visiting the website directly.
We've all seen how the White House has been (illegally) demanding social media do more to censor so-called "misinformation" and even pushed for Joe Rogan to be censored by Spotify.
ZeroHedge responded to the smear on Tuesday in an article titled, "Now We've Done It: We Pissed Off The CIA":
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.
The owner of ZeroHedge was already allegedly doxed by Bloomberg and identified as a Bulgarian former investment banker who has been living in the US since 2001.
The issue is not that ZeroHedge published works from the Strategic Culture Foundation, the issue is that they consistently undermine the DC regime's propaganda narratives on all fronts.
Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas just last week issued a "terrorism bulletin" claiming the US is in a "heightened threat landscape" due to "the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions."
"For example, there is widespread online proliferation of false or misleading narratives regarding unsubstantiated widespread election fraud and COVID-19," Mayorkas' bulletin said. 
If undermining the DC regime's propaganda is now considered to be a form of terrorism, then ZeroHedge is a top enemy of the state.
If ZeroHedge does not already have backup domains, they should purchase them ASAP.
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