More uncovered on shadow agency in charge of censoring Americans that ran through State Dept, funded leftwing NGOs

An interview with Secretary of State Marco Rubio has gone viral on social media because of what he said about government censorship.

In the interview with commentator Mike Benz, Rubio detailed how government censorship began as a positive response to the Sept. 11 terror attack but quickly morphed into a terrifying monstrosity.

“This started out 15, 10 years ago with this effort of let’s go after the messaging that al-Qaida and ISIS and others are putting to radicalize people,” he said. “And who’s going to be against that? That sounds normal.”

“And then it was, like, in 2016, oh, we had this foreign interference in our election; we need to start targeting some of that stuff. By 2020, it had grown into this movement of, like, actually going after individual American voices,” he added.

It all started innocently enough 10-15 years ago.

The State Department created a program to counter terrorist messaging from al-Qaida and ISIS.

Who could argue with that?

But here’s where it gets disturbing… pic.twitter.com/Yi4BPVc1pk

— Nas (@Nas_tech_AI) July 27, 2025

The man leading the effort, according to Rubio, was Richard Stengel, an anti-Trump loon who once claimed President Donald Trump “talks just like a Russian spy” and “a terrorist.”

Stengel and his crew “were taking money” from the federal government’s censorship program “and using it to fund these NGOs” that were supposed to be “impartial,” third-party arbitrators of truth.

Except the NGOs were leftist organizations that began “tagging and labeling voices in American politics – Ben Shapiro, The Federalist, others – tagging them as foreign agents.”

“American taxpayers, through the State Department, were paying groups to attack Americans and to try to silence the voice of Americans,” Rubio bluntly noted. “And there were consequences. These weren’t just a label they put on people. Some of these people got deplatformed, they got taken down, they couldn’t communicate. So it was outrageous.”

This censorship apparatus was also helped by for-profit groups like NewsGuard, a disgraced leftist censorship operation that Rubio cut off from government funds earlier this year.

The consequences were real and devastating.

These weren’t just labels – they led to Americans getting deplatformed and silenced online.

High-profile targets included Ben Shapiro and The Federalist.

But countless everyday citizens were also caught in the dragnet. pic.twitter.com/yJTXgR7BL6

— Nas (@Nas_tech_AI) July 27, 2025

Things began to ostensibly change when President Trump won the 2024 presidential election, and the Biden State Department reacted by seemingly disbanding its censorship operation. But it was a setup.

“They just renamed it and moved it somewhere else,” Rubio explained.

The good news, though, is that with Rubio now in charge, real changes are finally happening.

“Over the last few months, we’ve worked on it and just taken it down, and to the extent we’re spending money now, we are going to spend money on messaging,” he said. “It’s going to be pro-American messaging, and it’s going to be incentivizing and protecting free speech, which is threatened all over the world, including countries that are allies of ours.”

“The best way to counter disinformation – if that’s what people are thinking is out there – the best way to counter disinformation is free speech,” he added.

One way Rubio is fighting back is by documenting the previous administration’s censorship abuses.

“So I think what we have to do now … is sort of document what happened,” he said. “Because one thing is to say it in a broadcast like this, another thing is to actually put it on paper. And there’s two reasons to do it.”

“The first is because I think people who were harmed deserve to know that, and be able to prove that they were harmed; and then the other is to make sure it never happens again, right?” he added.

Sec. Rubio’s team has been quietly dismantling this system over recent months.

They’re documenting what happened for two critical reasons:

So those harmed can prove they were targeted to ensure it never happens again. pic.twitter.com/RZ7EmsQbLp

— Nas (@Nas_tech_AI) July 27, 2025

But the bigger threat looming ahead comes from Europe, where the European Union is now waging a war against free speech.

“We don’t want to see an American who happens to be living in London or happens to be living in Europe post something online about American politics or any politics, and all of a sudden they’re facing ramifications over there or they’re denied entry and something happens,” Rubio said.

“So our number one interest is the impact that it [the E.U.’s rules and regulations] has on Americans,” he added.

Watch the full interview below:

(Video Credit: Department of State)

Senior Staff Writer
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V. Saxena is a staff writer for BizPac Review with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University.

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