America First Legal has released a document titled COVID-19 Countering Foreign Influence Task Force Reporting and Analysis, obtained through litigation against the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). The report reveals that:
- CISA’s Countering Foreign Influence Task Force (CFITF) relied on entities like the Atlantic Council, Media Matters, and the Stanford Internet Observatory to label COVID-19 narratives as “foreign disinformation,” despite some being later proven accurate.
- Unelected officials at CISA used federal resources, including FEMA, to monitor and suppress dissenting COVID-19 narratives, such as former President Trump’s advocacy of hydroxychloroquine, which later showed potential benefits.
- CISA collaborated with foreign groups like the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) and EU vs. Disinfo to surveil and target speech protected under the U.S. Constitution.
The internal report, marked “FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY,” stated that CISA aimed to counter “anti-vaccination misinformation” threatening herd immunity efforts. It relied on FEMA’s “social listening” and monitored public sentiment on COVID-19 narratives, often directing citizens to FEMA’s “coronavirus rumor control” website.
Controversial narratives labeled as “misinformation” by CISA—such as mask effectiveness and the Wuhan lab leak theory—were later validated, highlighting flaws in the agency’s judgment.
The report also showed extensive reliance on biased organizations like Media Matters and the Atlantic Council, both of which have financial and ideological ties to left-leaning entities. AFL is suing these organizations for alleged collaboration with the government in mass surveillance and censorship.
AFL argues that CISA lacked legal authority to monitor COVID-19 speech and relied on claims of foreign disinformation threats from sources like Clint Watts of the Alliance for Securing Democracy. CISA cited this alliance 28 times in its report.
The findings, compounded by revelations from the Twitter Files, expose what AFL describes as a “Censorship Industrial Complex” aimed at controlling information under the guise of combating disinformation.
Read the CISA documents here.
