May 5, 2022- 7:32 p.m.
CNN and NY Times Help US Gov’t Lie About Spying on Americans
CNN host Dana Bash sat down with Mayorkas on May 1, in an interview titled “Bash presses Mayorkas about ‘1984’ comparisons to disinformation board”.
The CNN segment amounted to a defense of DHS’ Disinformation Governance Board, which Mayorkas minimized as a “small working group within the Department of Homeland Security,” supposedly with limited power.
“Will American citizens be monitored?” Bash asked, in regard to this disinformation board. “No,” Mayorkas said firmly. “Guarantee that?” Bash responded.
“We in the Department of Homeland Security don’t monitor American citizens,” he insisted.
This statement is blatantly false. DHS’ monitoring of American citizens is very well documented, by dozens of mainstream media outlets and civil liberties organizations. But instead of pushing back against this clear lie, the CNN host echoed the DHS secretary’s totally false claim.
“You don’t,” Bash replied in agreement. “But will this board change that?” she added.
“No, no, no,” Mayorkas repeated.
This is all completely, categorically false. The Intercept obtained documents through a Freedom of Information Act request showing how DHS has spied on activists protesting police brutality in the Black Lives Matter movement since at least 2014.
NBC 7 obtained DHS documents in 2019 that showed that “the U.S. government created a secret database of activists, journalists, and social media influencers tied to the migrant caravan and in some cases, placed alerts on their passports.”
In 2020, the New York Times itself reported that the “Department of Homeland Security deployed helicopters, airplanes and drones over 15 cities where demonstrators gathered to protest the death of George Floyd.”
That same year, the Washington Post revealed that the “Department of Homeland Security has compiled ‘intelligence reports’ about the work of American journalists covering protests.”
This led Oregon lawmakers to publicly demand “answers from the Department of Homeland Security, following new reports that the department spied on Portland protesters’ phones.”
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has exhaustively documented the department’s spying on Americans, noting five branches of DHS have intelligence missions. The ACLU even sued the department for spying on journalists and violating their civil liberties.
Some current and former DHS officials have tried to put the blame for these authoritarian policies solely on Donald Trump, but the reality is this surveillance started long before Trump entered office in 2017 and has continued since he left in 2021.
Yahoo News obtained documents in 2022 showing that the “controversial unit of Customs and Border Protection that trawled through the travel and financial records of journalists and lawmakers is still monitoring Americans.”
