Smiling Jack Read Krebs on Security 01091701

Kremlin-financed media outlet RT (formerly Russia Today) is little more than a propaganda machine controlled by Russian intelligence agencies. yet...Anyone shocked by the Kremlin-funded news station RT in all of this probably never heard of Voice of America, a U.S. government-funded news service that broadcast the American response to Soviet propaganda during the Cold War. 

The Ruse seem quite able actors in this field - The US seems a ready audience.

This stuff is taking me back to college days. I took a class on World Press at BU led by Larry Martin - actually Lawrence Martin-Bittman, a former Czech Intelligence Agent - who had a unique view on "News".

Martin-Bittman later wrote a memoir The KGB and Soviet Disinformation. There he wrote "Deception is a relatively easy game, particularly against anyone willing to be deceived."

One of Martin-Bittman's acts as part of Czech intelligence was to forge a letter from Cardinal Spellman to a W,German Anti-Communist leader, then disclosing it was a forgery, I guess doing no more than sowing doubt. 

His 1964 operation planted forged incriminating papers in a trunk which was then sunk Bohemia's Black Lake - then cued Czech TV to find while filming a documentary. The papers had some W German pol as a WW II Nazi, but not truely.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/01/dni-putin-led-cyberattack-propaganda-effort-to-elect-trump-denigrate-clinton/