Leaked State Department Files Fail to Prove Domestic Censorship Claims Against Disbanded Office
Documents leaked by a State Department official about the shuttered Global Engagement Center show no evidence the office spied on Americans, former officials say, even as the department plans a new $11m campaign against Chinese propaganda in south-east Asia.
A leak of State Department documents to a prominent conservative online figure was meant to prove long-standing claims that the Global Engagement Center (GEC), an office created to counter foreign propaganda, had secretly been used for domestic censorship. Two former senior GEC officials say the files show nothing of the sort.
The GEC lost its funding in 2024 and was fully disbanded after Donald Trump returned to office in 2025. Sarah Rogers, the State Department's undersecretary for public diplomacy, gave the so-called "GEC files" to rightwing analyst Jennica Pounds, who later claimed she had been leaked the material as part of an attempt to "entrap" her. Rogers denied this and published the files herself, alleging GEC staff had "betrayed their stated mission."
Daniel Kimmage, who led the GEC from its 2017 founding until its dissolution, and Carrie Goux, its former acting deputy coordinator, said the center's mandate was explicitly foreign-facing and nothing in the leaked material shows it ever targeted Americans. Kimmage said his own congressional testimony, included in the leak, had been selectively presented, distorting his answer to a question about whether the GEC evaluated US media outlets.
Much of the controversy traces back to GEC funding for the UK-based Global Disinformation Index, which separately published a 2022 study rating several conservative US outlets as high-risk for disinformation — a finding critics cite as proof of domestic meddling by a foreign-facing office.
During its nearly decade-long existence, the GEC published eight public reports on Russian and Chinese influence operations and helped broker an international pact against foreign disinformation, eventually signed by more than two dozen governments including Estonia and Finland. Despite a 2022 inspector general review finding it "generally effective," Congress declined to reauthorize the roughly $61m-a-year, 120-person office in 2024.
The State Department is now preparing an $11m, multi-year campaign to pay up to 30 online influencers across 11 south-east Asian countries $2,500 each to counter Chinese propaganda, alongside training programs and a trip to US studios. Former GEC officials say the department appears to be recreating similar work at greater cost through contractors, while the US risks losing international trust and standing on the issue.
