The New York Times reports the State Department so far has spent nothing to combat foreign election interference, a stunning revelation considering Congress allocated $120 million for the effort.
As a result, not one of the 23 analysts working in the department’s Global Engagement Center — which has been tasked with countering Moscow’s disinformation campaign — speaks Russian, and a department hiring freeze has hindered efforts to recruit the computer experts needed to track the Russian efforts.
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The role for the Global Engagement Center would be to assess Russian efforts and then set about amplifying a different set of voices to counter them, perhaps creating a network of anti-propaganda projects dispersed around the world, experts said.
Lack of interest and inaction cut available funds down considerably.
At the end of the Obama administration, Congress directed the Pentagon to send $60 million to the State Department so it could coordinate governmentwide efforts, including those by the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security, to counter anti-democratic propaganda by Russia and China ...
[Secretary of State Rex] Tillerson spent seven months trying to decide whether to spend any of the money. The State Department finally sent a request to the Defense Department on Sept. 18 to transfer the funds, but with just days left in the fiscal year, Pentagon officials decided that the State Department had lost its shot at the money.
With another $60 million available for the next fiscal year, the two departments dickered for another five months over how much the State Department could have.
After The New York Times, following a report on the issue by Politico in August, began asking about the delayed money, the State Department announced on Monday that the Pentagon had agreed to transfer $40 million for the effort, just a third of what was originally intended.
State Department officials say they expect to receive the money in April. In the meantime, Steve Goldstein, the under secretary for public diplomacy, said he would contribute $1 million from his own budget to “kick-start the initiative quickly.”
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On Wednesday, Mark E. Mitchell, a top official in the Defense Department, said much wrangling remained before any of the promised $40 million is transferred to the State Department.
“We’re still a ways off,” Mr. Mitchell said.
Read more: State Dept. Was Granted $120 Million to Fight Russian Meddling. It Has Spent $0. (NYT)