Shea-Porter Highlights Russian Propaganda Threat at House Armed Services Committee Hearing
WASHINGTON, DC – Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter (NH-01) today raised concerns about Russian state-sponsored propaganda’s global influence during a House Armed Services Committee hearing with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley.
“We know that Russia has been active in Europe. I see Russia very engaged in other people’s elections, not just ours,” said Congresswoman Shea-Porter. “I turn on television, and there’s Russian television sending out propaganda … What tools do we have and how much do we alert the world about Putin’s engagement throughout democracies in Europe?”
“I think we need to think about how we reengage in terms of pressing our values system and explaining who we are … we need to begin to rethink again what public diplomacy is about. It is not propaganda. It is actually telling the truth,” said former Secretary Albright. “Russia Today is a very clever mechanism. They are doing a lot of broadcasting around the United States, and there are Americans—Larry King, for instance—who participate in it. It is a propaganda machine … What Putin wants more than anything is to have our democracy be so confused that we don’t pay any attention to what he is doing, and he just kind of keeps moving into the vacuum, and pushing there. And we can’t allow the vacuum to exist, and we need to go back to some of the public diplomacy methods that we had developed,” citing Radio Free Europe and Voice of America.
“I think in terms of what Putin is doing in elections, we have to expose it, particularly in Europe, we need to shame him for it, and then hopefully the Europeans will show in their response that they are willing to stand up to it, and he will conclude that actually his interference made it worse for him rather than better,” said former NSA Advisor Hadley. “We have to recognize that Russia is trying to discredit democracy and discredit our system of government through fake news and faux- think tanks. And we need to expose that and we need to push back by exporting truth. We used to be in the business of exporting truth, and we need to get back into it.”
Earlier Tuesday on New Hampshire radio station WKXL, Shea-Porter discussed the FBI’s active investigation of President Trump’s campaign’s Russia ties, which Director James Comey has now confirmed. Shea-Porter continues to call for an independent investigation into the Trump administration’s Russia ties and the resignation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who lied under oath about contact with Russian officials.