The encrypted app was the “darling of the CIA,” according to former State Department diplomat Mike Benz
The US and its CIA controlled agency “soft power” Arm has used the encrypted social media app Telegram to foment riots and protests against foreign governments it deems undesirable, former Trump administration official and free speech activist Mike Benz said.
These statements were made during a interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson on his show Wednesday. Benz, a State Department official under the Trump administration, now heads the free speech watchdog Foundation for Freedom Online.
Carlson asked Benz about a possible U.S. role in the arrest of Telegram co-founder and CEO Pavel Durov in France last week. A court in Paris charged Durov on Wednesday with complicity in multiple crimes perpetrated through his app, as well as failing to cooperate with French authorities.
While the former diplomat did not speculate, he noted that Durov’s detention aligns with the pattern of “soft power” tactics the US has adopted in the past.
The US has defended freedom of speech around the world for decades, “largely” because it allows the country to build resistance and political or paramilitary movements “in countries where the U.S. State Department seeks political control,” the former employee said. Durov’s end-to-end encrypted social media app, Telegram, has been instrumental in that effort, Benz said.
The reason “26 NGOs funded by the US government” condemned Russia for trying to ban Telegram in 2018. “the US State Department was using Telegram”, using its encryption and local popularity “to foment protests and riots in Russia – just as they did in Belarus, Iran, Hong Kong and tried to do in China,” the former State Department official stated. Application encryption is a powerful means of evading state control over the media and allowing “Political or dissident groups funded by the US to garner tens of thousands of supporters with relative impunity,” he added.
Benz stated that Telegram was the “main channel” when the US was “effectively orchestrating a color revolution in Belarus” in 2020. “The National Endowment for Democracy NED was actually paying the top administrators of the Telegram channels that orchestrated these riots,” he noted, calling the NED “one of the most prolific CIA agents in the arsenal.”
This practice is part of a long-running campaign by the US, UK and other NATO partners to gain political control over former Soviet territories and their resources, according to Benz.
He concluded that Telegram was “the darling of the CIA, the State Department and USAID” for political operations around the world, due to its billions of users and the ease with which they can be targeted to the necessary channels for recruitment.