Former US Congresswoman Known for Disinformation Lectures Army’s Psychological Warfare School on Disinformation

A US mil­i­tary news web­site report­ed last month that for­mer Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­gress­woman and con­ser­v­a­tive media pun­dit Tul­si Gab­bard gave a guest lec­ture to stu­dents at the Army’s psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare school last week on sev­er­al top­ics, includ­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion. Accord­ing to the military.com report:

Novem­ber 22, 2022  Gab­bard, who has long been crit­i­cized by mem­bers of both major polit­i­cal par­ties for ped­dling pro-Russ­ian talk­ing points includ­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion, was act­ing in her role as a lieu­tenant colonel in the Army Reserve. She also dis­cussed psy­cho­log­i­cal oper­a­tions more broad­ly, includ­ing how to improve law­mak­ers’ under­stand­ing of it, accord­ing to inter­nal 1st Spe­cial Forces Com­mand com­mu­ni­ca­tions reviewed by Military.com. On Thurs­day, Gab­bard was speak­ing at an event at the John F. Kennedy Audi­to­ri­um at Fort Bragg, North Car­oli­na, dis­cussing social medi­a’s impact on democ­ra­cy, infor­ma­tion war­fare and dis­in­for­ma­tion, for stu­dents at the Army’s 43-week psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare school. Two sol­diers who were there said she briefly expressed con­cerns over dis­in­for­ma­tion pol­lut­ing Amer­i­can dis­course and the need to get U. S. soci­ety back to a place “where peo­ple trust one anoth­er.” No phones were allowed in the brief­ing. Read Next: Lost Years and Missed Oppor­tu­ni­ties: How the Pen­ta­gon Squan­dered the Chance to Com­bat Brain Injuries “LTC Gab­bard spoke about her per­son­al expe­ri­ences and per­spec­tives as a Civ­il Affairs Offi­cer in the Army Spe­cial Oper­a­tions com­mu­ni­ty and her under­stand­ing of strate­gic lev­el pol­i­cy mak­ing. It was not about any one spe­cif­ic top­ic,” Maj. Rick Dick­son, a spokesper­son for the John F. Kennedy Spe­cial War­fare Cen­ter and School told Military.com in a state­ment. “There was a Q&A peri­od after her remarks where stu­dents asked many dif­fer­ent ques­tions on a wide vari­ety of top­ics.” Psy­cho­log­i­cal oper­a­tions sol­diers are a key asset for Spe­cial Forces, serv­ing as a tool for the orga­ni­za­tion’s mis­sion of grow­ing guer­ril­la armies. Psy­ops focus­es on pro­pa­gan­da efforts tar­get­ing adver­saries, media manip­u­la­tion, mes­sag­ing and oth­er uncon­ven­tion­al com­mu­ni­ca­tions tac­tics on a bat­tle­field. Gab­bard has long flirt­ed with and out­right pro­mot­ed dis­in­for­ma­tion and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, some­times while in uniform.

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The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed in Novem­ber that Gab­bard had announced she was leav­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty,  accus­ing the par­ty of being “under the com­plete con­trol of an elit­ist cabal of war­mon­gers, dri­ven by cow­ard­ly wok­e­ness:” That post also pro­vid­ed fur­ther details on Gab­bard’s role as a “dar­ling of Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­dists and the Amer­i­can far-right”  as well as her pro-Russ­ian con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries on Ukraine and her polit­i­cal cam­paign sup­port from a Putin apol­o­gist and an accused Russ­ian spy.