Benz And Rogan exposure How USAID Pushed 'Blacklists' Of Independent Media While Operating Global Propaganda Network

Former State Department official-turned-truthsayer Mike Benz sat down with Joe Rogan for three hours this week, where the two went down the USAID rabbit hole.

To review – over the past several weeks, Elon Musk’s team at DOGE have descended on several key levers of power within the US government – including the US Treasury, the Office of Personnel Management, and of course, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) – which was quickly revealed as a rogue, unaccountable 'blob’ that used its vast funds not only to spread propaganda worldwide, it paid news organizations and 'disinformation’ researchers to collude against outlets such as ZeroHedge, The Federalist, and others in order to strip us of ad revenues and damage our reputation. (Fortunately your subscriptions, and generous support of our new store, are keeping the lights on).

Rogan and Benz

„It must have been very exciting to have the vault opened and to get a peek into the machine, because you’ve been describing this,” Rogan told Benz – who’s spent the last several years dispensing redpills. „The last time you were on the podcast, you went into depth about usaid, and it’s very curious why they chose USAID as the first organization for DOGE to investigate.”

„Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, the joke that I tell here is, it’s like what they tell you to do your first day of prison is you go in, you walk up to the meanest, baddest SOB and you punch them right in the mouth. I mean, that’s basically what’s happened here with the White House’s first target being USAID,” Benz replied.

Benz then went into how USAID funded NGOs, along with the deep state’s global propaganda news complex via 'Internews.’

If you have 13 minutes – watch this:

Joe Rogan and Mike Benz expose how USAID-funded NGOs—Internews, CEPPS, and EcoHealth Alliance—financed the Wuhan lab, a global propaganda network, and the online censorship of American citizens.

„You sponsored your own state censorship.”@joerogan@MikeBenzCyber pic.twitter.com/BGx6fqVKei

— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) February 12, 2025

How USAID Targets US Independent Media

Benz explained how USAID leaned on advertisers to boycott independent media outlets.

Benz: „For example, we just played internews and the internews CEO campaigning to governments and corporations and private sector civil society organizations around the world that they need to economically Blacklist news sites that operate on social media and those are U.S. news sites. This is the basis of lawsuits here in the US like Daily Wire and the Federalist suing the State Department. Because U.S. news sites are in these advertiser blacklists. And to that end, I want to note two things. First, if you go to my X feed and you type in the word advertiser or advertisers and if you need to, you can plug in the word USAID or CEPS in this.

And I want to show you that this is not internews gone wrong. This is not a half a billion dollar year grantee of USAID going rogue and being ideological about this. This is top down US government policy from the White House.„

…

„SEPS is a program that is basically a joint baby of USAID and the State Department and is implemented by USAID’s key operational arm, the National Endowment for Democracy. But this is a USAID program on countering disinformation. Internet censorship is what they do and we went over last time, remember we played that two minute video where they were openly saying that the plan is to get foreign governments to pass legal reform, pass laws and regulations to stop the spread of misinformation on US social media websites.”

Benz discussed how USAID has been used in the past to interfere in domestic politics – similar to how the CIA once targeted anti-Vietnam war activists in the 1960s and 1970s.

„This happened against the left, against the Democrats in the 1960s and 70s when the CIA and its sister orgs like USAID were pumping money into domestic politics to stop the anti-Vietnam War movement,” said Benz.

More on how USAID has been influencing international politics.

WOW. Mike Benz on Rogan lays out the entire USAID template that was used not just in Poland but here in the U.S.
When Poland elected a populist President that was not “Friendly to their influence”, NED began pressure to call for jailing of their political enemies AND to NOT… pic.twitter.com/SEVfaWdJlu

— Johnny St.Pete (@JohnMcCloy) February 13, 2025

Benz goes on to describe how every major institution in America, from media to universities, unions, NGOs, and even conceptions of public health, are instrumentalized by this system.

„What people are going to see on this is going to completely reorient their mental map of how they think the world works, how they think American power projects into the institutions.”

How Did We Get Here?

Benz delved into the history of how the government 'breached the social contract’ with Americans.

Benz: You know, it was really set up in 1948 when George Kennan created this NSC 10 2, this National Security Council. We completely reoriented the structure of the American Empire in 1948, after World War II. In 1947 we passed something called the National Security Act. That’s what established the CIA. That’s what established the National Security Council, which coordinates all of our foreign, foreign facing empire management work. It renamed the Department of War to the Department of Defense so that it didn’t look like we were acquiring territory by military force which had just been banned under international law under the UN Declaration of Human Rights. So we moved from primarily kinetic warfare into what George Kennan called just two months before he created the plausible deniability doctrine that we live under. He called this organized political warfare.

…

So in 1948, when we established the secrecy doctrine, doctrine that we now live under, and all these NGOs work under this cover effectively because of their sponsoring organizations, USAID or CIA or State.

Turned On Our Own People

Benz then goes into a group called the OCCRP (Corruption Reporting Project).

Benz: „This is a group that half of its funding comes from USAID and the US State Department. OCCRP has to the USAID and the State Department have a veto right over the staff that it can hire. This is the largest consortium of investigative journalists on planet Earth. This is the group that broke the Panama Papers. They got all these hacked documents. They got special access to it. I don’t have any facts on this. I’m simply noting that it’s an oddity that a group funded by a major CIA funding conduit, usaid, while the CIA has the ability to hack any target around the world that’s authorized by the National Security Council, they’re getting these special access documents that are reportedly either hacked or leaked and they’re being sponsored by the group that’s connected to something with a hacking power.”

…

They’ve been around for almost 20 years. And they were sponsored in order to do. They do investigative hit piece journalism about corruption. And what they do is they go after all of the State Department and USAID and DOD’s opponents in the region.

Ukraine

Benz and Rogan then segued into the topic of Ukraine, where then-Vice President Joe Biden bragged to the Council on Foreign Relations about forcing them to fire prosecutor Victor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma.

Benz: „So Viktor Shokin was investigating Burisma. Joe Biden personally weaponized USAID in order to force a foreign country’s prosecutor to be fired in order to get that billion…”

Rogan: „Can I stop you for a second? What was the investigation of Burisma? What did it entail?”

Benz: „I believe it was a similar corruption probe that there was misuse of funding. Other stuff is. Is well documented in Miranda Devine’s book, the Big Guy. But if you. So if you open those four screenshots, I don’t know if you’re able to center it or zoom out a little bit … Remember when Hunter Biden’s permanent blanket pardon goes back to, it goes back to 2014. And so this directs USAID to guarantee loans. So it’s loan guarantees for every phase of development of oil and gas in Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia. Now if you go to go to the next screenshot in this, this is from. This is a, you know, a foiaed or legally obtained internal document at the State Department which says despite his ruined name in Ukraine, Zlocheski is actively campaigning for. He’s been sending letters to Ambassadors Yannick, Yovanovitch and Pyatt. They note that Hunter Biden and Devon Archer are on the board. And they say even internally at State, USAID does have cooperation with Burisma. Says pre existing small scale, preexisting cooperations. They’re formally cooperating with Burisma in the region. They’re noting that. And then if you go to the next screenshot now this again is State Department email traffic that’s been unearthed. Okay, so they’re talking about doing co branding with USAID and Burisma and the public private partnership around USAID and Burisma, but then noting, quote, the very sticky wicket of the Hunter Biden connection on Burisma’s board.”

Watch the entire interview here.

* * *

Thank you to everyone who has subscribed or bought something from the ZeroHedge Store (our waxed canvas hats have been flying off the shelf!). With ad revenues in the toilet, we we couldn’t do it without you.