FBI Turns to Social Media to Track Traitors

If you’ve logged on to social media in the past few months, you may have seen it: a video of the Russian embassy on a gray, cloudy day in Washington with the sound of cars and buses passing by in the background.

A man’s voice asks in English: “Do you want to change your future?” Russian subtitles appear at the bottom of the screen, and the narrator notes the one-year anniversary of “a major invasion of the Ukraine by Russia.”

As somber music begins to play, the camera pans to the left, taking the viewer down Wisconsin Avenue, to the Adams Morgan subway station, and then across Washington, ending at FBI headquarters a few blocks away. the White House.

“The FBI values ​​you. The FBI can help you,” FBI Deputy Director Alan Koehler says as the video ends, with Russian subtitles still playing on the screen. “But only you have the power to take the first step.”

The video, released by the FBI’s Washington office, first appeared as a post on the office’s Twitter account on February 24. Five other versions started the same day as paid ads on Facebook and Instagram, costing the office between $5,500 and $6,500.

It was not the first or last time that the government agency, which has an annual budget of more than $10 billion, spends money to woo Russian officials.

The video is part of a long-running and expansive campaign by the FBI to use social media ads to recruit disgruntled Russian officials, who are stationed in the US and other countries; in part to track down Americans who have betrayed their country to help Moscow.

An analysis of the voice of america found that the FBI has paid tens of thousands of dollars, at a minimum, to multiple platforms for social media ads targeting Russian officials, and the pace of such ad buys increased just before and after Moscow launched its latest invasion of Ukraine.

Several former US counterintelligence officials who spoke for this story about the FBI’s efforts described the publicity as money well spent.

The FBI wants to find well-placed Russian officials who can “help identify where American spies may be,” he told the VOA Douglas London, a three-decade veteran of the CIA’s Clandestine Service.

“He is looking for Russian agents to catch and convict American spies and Russian illegals,” he added, describing the mission as part of the office’s DNA.

Another veteran CIA official, Jim Olson, agreed, telling the VOA that the purpose of the FBI’s approach to Russian officials is unequivocal.

“For every American traitor, every American spy, there are members of that intelligence service who either know the identity of that American or know enough about what they produce to give us a clue in their identification,” Olson said.

“All tools available”

The FBI declined to comment directly on its decision to spend several thousand dollars to post the two-minute video as an ad on Facebook and Instagram, saying simply that it “uses a variety of means” to gather intelligence.

“The FBI will evaluate all available tools to protect the national security interests of the United States,” the FBI’s Washington Field Office told the voice of america in an email. “And we will use all legal means available to locate people with information that can help protect the United States from threats to our national security.”

Some of the FBI’s previous forays into social media advertising caught the public eye, first in October 2019 and then again in March of last year.

However, a review of publicly available data indicates that the bureau’s use of social media for counterintelligence is broader than previously believed.

According to data from the Meta Ad Library, which contains information on Facebook and Instagram ads dating back to May 2018, the FBI and its field offices have so far spent just under $40,000 on ads targeting Russian speakers, generating up to 6.9 million visits.

While most of the ads were targeted to specific locations, such as Washington and New York, some were seen much further afield, garnering views across much of the US and even in countries like Spain, Poland, Nigeria, France and Croatia.

It would also appear that the FBI’s paid ads ran on platforms other than Meta.

Nicholas Murphy, a 20-year-old sophomore at Georgetown University in Washington, was in his dorm last March looking for news about the Russian invasion of Ukraine when he saw an ad on YouTube.

“It was just text with some kind of weird background … all in Russian,” said Murphy, a native of Park City, Utah, who doesn’t speak Russian and used a translation app to decipher the ad.

“I didn’t know at the time if it was coming from the Russian government, if it was coming from our government, if it was some kind of propaganda, if it was fake,” Murphy told the VOA. “He evoked a lot of thoughts about Russian influence in Facebook ads in the elections,” she added, referring to the 2016 US presidential election.

It’s unclear how many ads the FBI paid to run on YouTube or through Google.

A search on Google’s recently launched Ads Transparency Center shows that the FBI paid to run the Russian-language version of its two-minute video most recently on April 28. But the database only shows information from the last 30 days.

The FBI itself declined to provide details about the extent of its publicity efforts on social media, though the Washington Field Office acknowledged VOA News via email that uses “various social media platforms.”

“The FBI finds these efforts to be productive and profitable,” he told the VOA the FBI’s Washington Field Office. The office declined to be more specific about whether spies have been identified as a result of the ads.

The Russian embassy in Washington did not respond to calls or emails seeking comment about the FBI’s use of social media ads targeting Russian officials in the US.

However, some former US counterintelligence officials argue that Russia has reason to be concerned.

“I think some good Russians are embarrassed, shocked, embarrassed by what Putin is doing in the Ukraine, killing Slavic brothers and sisters. And I think there will be people who would like to fight back,” said Olson, a former CIA counterintelligence chief. .

London, the former CIA Clandestine Services official and author of ‘The Recruiter: Spying and the Lost Art of American Intelligence’also believes that the FBI’s persistent efforts to reach out to disgruntled Russians on social media will pay off.

“In general, the Russians who have worked with us have done it out of patriotism…they were upset with the government,” he said. And the Russian officials the FBI hopes to contact just need a little nudge.

It’s hard to gauge whether the FBI’s spending on social media advertising is achieving the desired results. Public metrics like those provided by social media companies like Meta can give an idea of ​​how many people are seeing ads and where they are, but they don’t shed much light on who ultimately interacts with ads to the point of a response.

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