FPI / August 16, 2021
Geostrategy-Direct.com
A document circulating on Chinese state-controlled social media which claims to contain remarks then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made in June 2020 about the U.S. planning to defeat China in a war "without shedding blood" is a fake, Pompeo has said.
The document began circulating on the widely-used platform Weibo in July and in less than a month had been viewed more than 3.4 million times on Weibo and millions more on other social media sites.
In an interview with security correspondent Bill Gertz, Pompeo said: “This completely fake document is circulated knowing full well that it will be shown to be a fraud. But to the tens of millions around the world who read it unaware of its made-up origin, it accomplishes many purposes” for the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The forged document is part of an anti-U.S. propaganda offensive aimed at blaming the U.S. Army for the coronavirus pandemic which a large number of officials believe originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, Pompeo said in the Washington Times report.
Pompeo said the disinformation is an attempt by China’s government to distract attention from what he called Beijing’s “pandemic cover-up” regarding the origins and the early days of Covid-19.
“Second, it seeks to diminish my stature and my credibility in the eyes of the unknowing reader and this prospectively tries to diminish my attacks on their evil,” he said.
Amid growing evidence that the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese propaganda outlets have been running daily reports blaming the United States for causing the coronavirus pandemic.
The release of a forged document may be linked to the coming U.S. intelligence report on the virus origin.
The Biden administration in May ordered intelligence agencies to conduct a three-month study of the virus origin.
China’s government has denied the virus came from one of its labs engaged in extensive virus research, including so-called “gain-of-function” experiments to make viruses more infectious to humans.
China also has a covert biological weapons program and is said to be working on bio-weapons capable of targeting specific ethnic groups.
An analysis of the document Pompeo said was a forgery, posted on Weibo on July 30, reveals the use of a sophisticated technique of combining accurate information with disinformation. The English-language document claims to be a “speech record” on a cover sheet bearing United States Military Academy, West Point, N.Y., “office of the dean.”
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