Propagating the propaganda

However, not all viewed the Vesti report from the same perspective. The Sun, in particular, treated it with skepticism, headlining that the story was a “bizarre propaganda report” and pointing out in the text that the Russian media are “essentially controlled by the state.” It also reported that the US military denied that Gorenc had made the comment attributed to him.

Source: The Sun, April 19, 2017, 12.12 am.

Fox News, which picked up the Sun story, shortened its headline by omitting the reference to “propaganda,” most probably to save length, but included the comment on the Russian media being essentially state controlled.

Source: Fox News.

The Daily Express was less wary, stating that the Russian electronic warfare systems “can destroy the American equipment installed on missiles, aircraft and ships,” although it showed a degree of caution by headlining that this was what Russia “claims.” It also quoted Gorenc, without mentioning the US rejection of the quote.

The “alternative” news sites, which are often marked by a much less critical approach to disinformation, largely amplified these posts without changing the overall tone. Before It’s News, for example, reproduced the full Sun article, including the “propaganda” headline, and added its own gloss, “propaganda or a technological reality?” War News Updates reproduced the Fox version, while ReportUK.org reproduced both the Daily Star and the Daily Express versions on consecutive days.

Even Investment Watch Blog (IWB), a known amplifier of fake news which has been termed “among the most untrustworthy sources in the media,” quoted the Fox News article with questions of its own:

Lets look at incident 1. Russia has claimed it can disable the entire US Navy in one fell swoop using powerful electronic signal jamming. A news report from the country claims the technology could render planes, ships, and missiles useless. Wow, if this is true, and I have no idea…what chance would we have against them if we went to war? I know there are some experts on IWB, who would actually know this. Right now, I am questioning this news coming out of Russia. The report says, “Today, our Russian Electronic Warfare (REW) troops can detect and neutralize any target from a ship’s system and a radar, to a satellite.” The report claims a Russian war plane flew several times around American destroyer the USS Donald Cook in the Black Sea several years ago, disabling it systems and leaving it helpless. If this is true, whoa….bad news.

While showing doubt, the IWB article did not dismiss the Vesti piece outright:

This statement I do not understand: The report says, “You don’t need to have expensive weapons to win — powerful radio-electronic jamming is enough.” Are you telling me, this equipment and ability is not expensive? Does the US have it, too? If not, why not?

Overall, therefore, the Vesti report was met with a varying degree of skepticism, but achieved significant overall reach, being shared tens of thousands of times, and cross-posted on dozens of websites.

Second time lucky

This was not the first time the story had been pushed by the Kremlin media.

The first iteration of the fake emerged on April 21, 2014, when the German service of Kremlin outlet Sputnik claimed that a Russian SU-24 had “crippled” an American destroyer in the Black Sea (archive). The story ran the same day in English on Russian Radio’s India service; the original link is now inactive, but the story has been preserved by blog jhaines6, conspiracy blog Northerntruthseeker (which presented it as factual) and archive web.archive.org.

Source: Sputnik Deutsch. Image US Navy / Pendergrass. “Russian SU-24 cripples American destroyer.” Archived on May 2, 2017.

According to the English version of the article:

“Everything went normally, American radars calculated the speed of the approaching target. And suddenly all the screens went blank. ‘Aegis’ was not working any more, and the rockets could not get target information.”

It continued,

“After the incident, the foreign media reported that “Donald Cook” was rushed into a port in Romania. There all the 27 members of the crew filed a letter of resignation. It seems that all 27 people have written that they are not going to risk their lives. This is indirectly confirmed by the Pentagon statement according to which the action demoralized the crew of the American ship.”

The German version was an almost verbatim translation. The chief sources given were “Russian media and bloggers,” for the claim of the system being knocked out, and “the foreign media” for the Romanian visit.

The description of the course of events is strikingly similar to that of the “Johnny-Mary” letter: first the radar screens died, then the Aegis shut down and the air-defense missiles stopped working. Since the Sputnik reports do not name the sources for this part of the story, it is hard to tell whether the fake letter was their inspiration; the attribution to “Russian media and bloggers” certainly indicates that it is not based on credible sources, such as the US or Russian militaries.

The claim of mass resignations is easier to track, because the number is so specific. It can be traced to an article published in mid-April 2014 by online media outlet novorus.info, which calls itself the “central information agency” of Novorossiya, a term used by Russian-led separatists in eastern Ukraine.

The article was datelined April 18, but a Google search shows that it was referenced by Russian aggregator pikabu.ru as early as April 14, and debunked by Russian user “Maksym” late on April 15 (early on April 16, Moscow time).

Google search for the period April 12–14 for the term “дональд кук 27”, showing the pikabu.ru result on April 14.

The article claimed that 27 members of the Cook’s crew had resigned as a result of the flypast, quoting them as saying that they “do not intend to put their lives in danger.” Citing a Reuters report which quoted Warren’s Pentagon statement, it claimed that the Cook had been “urgently evacuated” to Romania because the flypast had “demoralized” the crew, who were undergoing “psychological treatment.”

Source: novorus.info. The headline reads, “The Pentagon acknowledged that the imitation Su-24 attack on the US Navy destroyer had a demoralizing effect on the crew.” The video it claims to show is inactive.

In fact, as pointed out by fact-checking service StopFake, the Reuters report on Warren’s comment made no reference to an urgent evacuation, nor to demoralization, nor to psychological treatment. Far from being an emergency, the Cook’s visit to Constanta had been planned long enough in advance to arrange a presidential visit and a series of exercises.

The combination of false information and the misquoting of a named source makes it highly likely that this is another deliberate fake, presented as news, and designed to glorify Russia and denigrate the US Navy.

Nonetheless, on April 30, 2014, Russian state newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta ran a long and gloating article claiming that the Su-24 had targeted the Cook with the Khibiny system, knocking the entire Aegis system out of action, and that the ship had “hurried to a Romanian port to restore its nerves.” It also quoted a “range of media” as giving the “information” that 27 crew members had resigned.

Source: Rossiiskaya Gazeta. “What scared the American destroyer.”

“The Americans have got used to wiping out the badly-armed ranks of desert partisans with missiles while they sit in complete safety. And if it’s not like that, they don’t play,” it sneered, before reciting a long list of Russian electronic warfare assets.

The article wrongly attributed the claim that “the crew was demoralized” to the Pentagon briefing. The claim of 27 resignations was attributed to a “range of media,” without naming them or providing evidence. Again, the likelihood is that this article in Rossiiskaya Gazeta — the Russian Federation’s official newspaper of record — was another deliberate fake.

On this occasion, the fake had less reach. It was not until September 2014 that it began to spread significantly abroad. On September 13, anti-American site voltairenet.org translated the essence of the Rossiiskaya Gazeta article into Spanish, leading with the comment that “The great media of the Atlanticist press have not mentioned this incident, but the whole world’s military observers and experts haven’t stopped commenting.”

Source: Voltairenet.org. “What scared the USS Donald Cook in the Black Sea so much?”

Translations into French, Portuguese, Arabic, German, Italian and Polish followed over the next ten days, with an English version in November:

“Since that incident, which the Atlanticist media have carefully covered up despite the widespread reactions sparked among defense industry experts, no US ship has ever approached Russian territorial waters again.”

The Voltaire Network story was picked up by a number of alternative and fake news sites in the United States. These included InfoWars (which claimed that the story had been “skipped over by the Pentagon-friendly corporate media”), Before Its News, Futurist Trendcast, Veterans Today, Gary North: The Tea Party Economist, LewRockwell.com, The Smirking Chimp, The Tap Blog, Above Top Secret and others.