Former US Naval Intelligence Officer Spreads Russian Propaganda on YouTube

Last month the US pub­li­ca­tion Vice post­ed a pro­file of Patrick Lan­cast­er, a for­mer USA naval intel­li­gence offi­cer now act­ing as part of Rus­si­a’s pro­pa­gan­da appa­ra­tus on YouTube. The arti­cle begins:

June 9, 2022 Patrick Lan­cast­er seems to have a knack for being in the right place at the right time. In Feb­ru­ary, on the eve of Russia’s inva­sion of Ukraine, Lan­cast­er seemed to be first on the scene to report that three Russ­ian civil­ians had been killed when Ukrain­ian forces set off an impro­vised explo­sive device (IED) along the coun­try’s east­ern bor­der with Rus­sia. A month lat­er, as the war raged, Lan­cast­er report­ed­ly found him­self trail­ing a Russ­ian sol­dier through the burnt-out remains of a Mar­i­upol school that had alleged­ly been used as a base for Ukraine’s mil­i­tary. In the base­ment, Lancaster’s footage showed the body of a local woman who the Russ­ian sol­diers claimed had been raped by mem­bers of the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary and had a swasti­ka paint­ed in blood on her chest.  “It was a base of the Nation­al Guard and pre­sum­ably the fight­ers of the Azov Bat­tal­ion,” a Russ­ian sol­dier told Lan­cast­er on his YouTube channel.But the explo­sion on the Russ­ian bor­der turned out to be a fake, con­coct­ed by the Krem­lin as a way to jus­ti­fy its immi­nent inva­sion. And evi­dence sug­gests that the sol­diers who paint­ed the swasti­ka on the woman’s body were from Rus­sia. As Russia’s inva­sion began, the EU and tech plat­forms moved swift­ly to stem the flow of dis­in­for­ma­tion com­ing from the Krem­lin about the con­flict. But those mea­sures have most­ly failed, and for Lan­cast­er, the war has been a huge boon, help­ing him boost his YouTube sub­scribers from just over 50,000 when the war began to over 500,000 fol­low­ers today.It was no sur­prise that Lan­cast­er, a for­mer Navy intel­li­gence offi­cer from St. Louis, was the one shar­ing these sto­ries. Over the last eight years, he has embed­ded him­self with pro-Russ­ian sep­a­ratist forces in Don­bas, spread pro-Krem­lin dis­in­for­ma­tion about the down­ing of Malaysian Air­lines flight MH17, worked with numer­ous Krem­lin-backed Tv sta­tions, and most recent­ly appeared on Alex Jones’ Infowars spread­ing pro-Krem­lin nar­ra­tives about the war.

Read the rest here.

Jack Poso­biec is anoth­er for­mer US intel­li­gence offi­cer and promi­nent con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist help­ing to facil­i­tate Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da. Poso­biec will be fea­tured in a forth­com­ing GIOR report on US ampli­fiers of Russ­ian propaganda.