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Old and new information tricks Disinformation Aug 3rd 2006 From The Economist print edition Cold-war propaganda wars return

AP Lenin's Transdniestrian headquarters SOVIET propagandists were experts in the art of disinformation: planting specious stories in obscure corners of the media, claiming, for example, that the CIA invented AIDS. Now Russia's interests are once again being promoted by information sources that look plausible, at least until you look closely at their antecedents. Take, for example, the International Council for Democratic Institutions and State Sovereignty (ICDISS), a grand-sounding outfit that says it works on “result-oriented nation-building for new and emerging states”. It produced a report in July supporting international recognition for Transdniestria, a breakaway region of Moldova that has had Russian support and Western disapproval since a brief civil war in 1992. Slickly produced and heavily footnoted, the report was publicised in Russia and Transdniestria as evidence that influential outside opinion was conceding the case for independence. That would be in sharp contrast to all Western governments' policy to date, which has been trying, rather ineffectually, to reunite Transdniestria with Moldova. The report says it is based on the work of a bunch of well-known international lawyers, including a serving State Department official, and academics from Stanford, Oxford and Harvard. It implies they attended a conference at the Beacon Hotel in Washington, DC, in April 2006. The truth is rather different. For a start, the Beacon Hotel has no record of any such conference. None of the supposed outside experts attended it. Those contacted crossly denied involvement, though one, a doctoral student, says he did offer some advice. The ICDISS has now removed the names from the report. That is puzzling enough. But the ICDISS is even odder. It has no address and no telephone number. Although its website, and an entry on a write-it-yourself encyclopedia, Misplaced Pages, claim that it was founded in 1999, there is no trace of its activities, or of its supposed staff members, in news databases or the internet before January this year. Since then, it seems to be solely involved in promoting Transdniestria. It claims to be based in America, but does not appear to be a charity there (for more on the ICDISS, see this article).

Its website is registered at a hotel address in Mexico, with a phone that does not answer, and operated from a server in Latvia. And that is positively illuminating compared with the report's other supposed publisher, the Euro-Atlantic Joint Forum Contact Group, which seems to have no existence other than its logo. The report itself is written in professional legalese, peppered with Latin phrases and confident references to precedent. But some bits read awkwardly, with mistakes (telephone “centrals” rather than “exchanges”) often made by Russians writing in English. Reached by e-mail, the ICDISS programme director, identifying herself as Megan Stephenson, declined to talk on the telephone, or to give details of ICDISS financing, staff, headquarters or other activities. The group wished to keep a low profile because of its previous involvement in protests in Venezuela, which had led to the arrests of its activists, she explained. A sentence on a dormant Venezuelan opposition website does acknowledge help from the ICDISS, although how, when and where is not clear. “If you wish to reach for the somewhat strained conclusion that our little group of volunteers is a Kremlin front, then so be it, but I again state clearly for the record that this is not the case,” insists Ms Stephenson.

The Transdniestria report is oddly similar to a recently published English-language “psychiatric assessment” of the Georgian president, Mikhail Saakashvili. This claims, falsely, to be endorsed by Western hospitals and research institutes. It portrays the Georgian leader (a Russian bugbear) as a paranoid hot-head. One plausible conclusion is that the Kremlin is engaged in a new push to support Transdniestria and three similar statelets, as a response to the likely acceptance later this year of independence for Kosovo, a province of Serbia mostly populated by ethnic Albanians. Victor Yasmann, an analyst in Prague, predicts that Russia will invite the four to join the Commonwealth of Independent States, a Russian-led talking shop. That would be a half-way house to their full independence, a gain for the Kremlin and a setback for the West. Certainly Moldova, poor, weak, divided and neglected like no other ex-communist country, seems to be hotting up. Transdniestrian politicians have blamed Moldovan provocateurs for a bomb attack on a bus in Tiraspol, the capital, that killed eight people on July 6th. Transdniestria will hold another referendum on independence on September 17th. Western countries will not recognise it, but Russia may. In Moldova proper, the Gagauz minority (Orthodox by religion, Turkish by ethnicity), which is strongly pro-Russian, is restive. It may demand independence too. The economy is reeling from a Russian embargo on its main export, wine—which is also imposed on Georgia. Transdniestria's economy, based on arms, steel and trade (critics say smuggling) is thriving. Faced with all this, some in Moldova despair of an independent future. Better, perhaps, to abandon dreams of joining a cold-hearted Europe, and fall in with Russia's wishes: a neutral and federal Moldova, with a special status for the Russian language. Others ponder dumping Transdniestria and rejoining kindred Romania, from which they were separated by Stalin in 1940. That idea seemed outlandish, until it was floated last month, with seeming seriousness, by Romania's president Traian Basescu. Such thoughts are a distraction, argues Andrei Popov, at a think-tank in Moldova. The real task should be to reform the country's dismal justice system, local government and investment climate. Enviability is the best way to stability, not fretting over the means of failure. http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7252974

http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_SNVNJSQ

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7258534

Disinformation Covering tracks Aug 3rd 2006 From Economist.com How to disguise, inflate and disappear on the internet

TRACKING down the International Council for Democratic Institutions and State Sovereignty (ICDISS) which seems to be a front organisation for a Kremlin-backed rogue statelet called Transdniestria (see article), is easy at first, then very difficult. The first port of call is, of course, icdiss.org. This is nicely designed and eloquently written. At first sight, it looks like just what it claims to be—the product of some seasoned foreign-policy wonks who want to get their hands dirty in helping new countries to get on their feet. But all the details are strikingly vague.

The website’s registration can be found at srsplus.com. Googling those details shows no trace on the internet for the “Robinson Corbett-Smith” who registered the site on January 14th this year. The address given is a hotel. The phone number is incomplete. A reverse IP search reveals that the site is hosted in Riga, Latvia, along with 850-odd others, mostly relatively innocent such as rapegod.com, but also pridnestrovie.net and visitpmr.com which are propaganda sites for Transdniestria. These sites acknowledge help from the ICDISS. A Lexis-Nexis search for the ICDISS, in all languages and media going back 20 years, produces not a single entry. None of the people supposedly working for it—Joseph Connolly, Megan Stephenson or William Wood—appear in any plausible foreign-policy context in internet searches. A Misplaced Pages entry is authoritative but vague. It refers to a foreign-policy blog, diplomadic.blogspot.com, which it implies has connections to the ICDISS. But this has been largely defunct, and contains no mention of the organisation. The Misplaced Pages entry’s history shows that some unkind person has tried to change it, to say that the ICDISS is based not in Washington, DC but in the Transdniestrian capital, Tiraspol, and is made up not of 60 diplomats and specialists, but four officers of the ministry of state security there. The original author of the entry, who works under the name of Liliana Dioguardi, has changed it back to the more flattering version. So who’s she? Someone of that name, apparently an Italian-based Venezuelan émigré, has contributed in Spanish to an internet discussion in 2004. But her mobile is disconnected and her landline doesn’t answer. An e-mail brings no response. Further investigation of the ICDISS website reveals several different versions of a controversial document on Transdniestrian independence, which has been published in the Russian media, supposedly authored by eminent Western jurists. The Russian version is subtly different in its attribution, saying that the report is “based on” their work. The English version says it “draws from research by a number of noted attorneys, in particular the following:” Later versions drop all the attributions—presumably after complaints from the individuals concerned (which have been seen by The Economist). The report is supposedly based on a conference held at the Beacon Hotel in Washington in April. The hotel says it has no trace of such a booking. Meanwhile, an e-mail to the ICDISS has produced a response, apparently from Ms Stephenson. She has been interviewed in the Tiraspol Times, an online magazine produced (again, expertly but mysteriously) in support of the authorities there. But whereas that interview is forceful and forthcoming, Ms Stephenson is polite but elusive when dealing with The Economist. A list of questions includes: 1) Who funds you? 2) Where are you based? 3) Who are your trustees? 4) What is your tax status? 5) What are your publications? 6) Was your April 2006 conference on PMR (the Russian acronym for Transdniestria) public? If so, who attended it? 7) Who are your staff? 8) Why does your website not give a physical address or phone number? 9) Why is your website registered in Mexico? In response, she says merely: “We tend to shy away from publicity, in part because it may hurt our access and work but—more importantly—because it is potentially damaging to our collaborators in the countries where we work to affect changes.” Repeated requests bring a few more details. The ICDISS was active in trying to topple Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, she says. Some of their people are still in jail there. That chimes, faintly, with Ms Dioguardi’s involvement on their Misplaced Pages entry. But there is no other trace of ICDISS involvement in Venezuela on the internet, barring a single line, in faint, tiny type, at the bottom of the home pages in English and Spanish on militaresdemocraticos.com. The report’s author, Mr Wood, supposedly a Mexico-based lawyer and former United Nations bureaucrat, is on holiday in Guatemala and uncontactable. The hotel bill for the mysterious Beacon hotel conference is in the New York office of Mr Connolly, supposedly the director of the ICDISS steering committee. He declines to fax a copy, instead making veiled threats of legal action. It is possible that ICDISS is a genuine but publicity-shy outfit that was involved, quixotically or self-interestedly, in trying to topple Mr Chávez, and now, for whatever reason, is promoting Transdniestria. If so, it would be very easy for Ms Stephenson to prove her bona fides, for example by giving a phone number for some reputable person or organisation that could vouch for her organisation. Despite repeated requests over several days, this doesn’t happen.